When we meet at Oneworld publishers in Bloomsbury, author Nicole Dennis-Benn has just arrived back from a lunch of fish ’n’ chips, following a morning of meeting London’s booksellers. On a whirlwind tour for her second novel, Patsy, this is the first trip to the UK for Nicole and her wife, Emma.
In four days, they will squeeze in much of the city’s sites amidst her book events and, amazingly for any tourist in our un-air-conditioned capital, enjoy the record-breaking July heatwave. She quickly responds that the breezes were “a relief” compared to the stifling summer in New York City, where the Jamaican author has made her home.