What inspired you to write about Belle Époque Paris?
A number of things lead me to Paris. In late 2009 I was visiting my parents in my home town of Darlington and we started looking through some family photo albums. We are a family of hoarders, I’m afraid. My father’s mother was born in 1892 and went travelling in Europe on her own with money sewn into her skirts before the First World War. As well as photographs of her and her friends in Vienna, we also have some of her sketches. Thoughts of a young female artist coming from a small northern town started there. There were also pictures of my great aunts, born in 1878 and 1882. One of them, Constance Charlotte Robertson, was the first lady doctor in Darlington. Neither married, and they lived together for many years. I have a picture of them looking very beautiful. That photograph was part of the inspiration for the novel too. Then I came across the story of the Paris floods, and the idea of writing a story where the nightmare of the main character is reflected by the city falling apart around her took hold. The more I read about Paris at the time, the more I loved it. It was such a modern, forward-looking, confident city with its broad boulevards and electric light, cars and telephones, but life was more precarious than it seemed. There were extremes of poverty and wealth, the siege of Paris and the suppression of the communist uprising had left deep wounds, and of course war was again not far away.
How did you research the period and the people your characters would meet?
Lots and lots of reading followed by long walks along the river and some staring out of windows. For a sense of period, travel guides are incredibly useful, also memoirs of foreigners living in Paris. I read lots of the contemporary French writers too, but it was the memoirs of a couple of young American women living in the city at the time that helped me most with the feel of the city. They notice the sort of details that would strike someone like Maud, but the French chroniclers would pass over as not needing to be said. Add to that the paintings, photographs and films of the period and you start to build up a real sense of the time. Personalities you pursue through biographies and diaries, letters and sketches.
Which characters did you most enjoy creating and why?
Ah, that’s an impossible question. I enjoyed them all for different reasons. Maud is quite close to me in some ways, though I had a much nicer home life as a child. Miss Harris I enjoyed writing because she is a tribute to a real and remarkable woman, Miss Ada Leigh. Yvette and Tanya both sort of appeared fully formed. It is a strange thing with writing that you rarely feel you are in control of creating a character. Rather it seems that they reveal themselves as you write. Obviously they come from you, your friends and relatives and the research, but the characters that work take on a life of their own. I just follow them about writing down what they say.
The narrative is infused with the art and artists of the time. Is this a passion of yours?
It is now. Writing the book gave me an excuse to get to know that period in art in much more detail. I’ve always loved spending time in galleries and been very jealous of those people who have artistic talent. Both my brothers are gifted artists, and I couldn’t draw a convincing stick man, so to think alongside Maud I had to do a lot of work. But it was work that I loved. I hung around with artist friends, ate up biographies and volumes of art history and tried to look at the world in terms of colour and form more explicitly. I read catalogues of oil colours and artists materials, how to draw and paint manuals from the period and a lot of art criticism of the time. It’s a case of filling your mind with the material then letting it breathe out in the writing. I like the word ‘infused’, I’m always looking to give a flavour to the writing without just dumping information on the poor reader.
What differences did you find between writing a novel set in the 20th century and your previous books set in the late 1700s? Is it harder or easier to recreate more recent history?
I’m honestly not sure. I’ve spent more time in the 18th century, but there’s a lot more material available about 1909 and it’s easier to access. I wish there were a few more guides to London written in the 1780s giving the prices of the dinner in various eating houses, and which ones were fashionable, though having written several novels set in the period I’m beginning to build up quite a library. Having an infinite (almost) supply of photographs is very handy for 1909. The print library of the British Museum is a wonderful resource for the 1780s, but it’s a much more partial, more twisted viewpoint than you get from a photograph. When it comes down to it every book brings its own challenges in terms of the research. The most difficult one is always the one you are writing at the moment.