The historical novelist revisits the books whose beautiful writing most captured her imagination

KATE LORD BROWN

©Lucy Williams

Writers are readers first, and one of my earliest memories is climbing on top of my wardrobe to reach a copy ofOne Thousand and One Nightsmy mother had put out of bounds. That’s probably good parenting – want your child to read more? Tell them a book is too advanced and place it tantalisingly in sight but out of reach.

No doubt as a result of this, my new novel The Golden Hour draws on a lifetime living and working in the Middle East. I write epic and intimate historical fiction – I’m always looking for that ‘diamond in the dustheap’ as Virginia Woolf called it, that glittering piece of forgotten history that makes you think: why doesn’t everyone know about this? With The Golden Hour, it was the work of women archaeologists in thirties Egypt. Flicking through books on Egyptology I’ve had since childhood, I thought: where are the women? Women’s history is there, but it often takes some digging, and in writing my novels it’s been an immense privilege to talk to the women who flew Spitfires, or took part in the Spanish Civil War.

The research for The Golden Hour was heaven. Not only did I get to talk to archaeologists, and spend time with Arabian Horse breeders, I had a wonderful excuse to go back and read ‘old friends’, like Olivia Manning and Agatha Christie. I read every Christie I could get my hands on as a teenager, and always loved the world she described on digs in North Africa and the Middle East. I write in a library in an old house on Exmoor surrounded by thousands of books which have travelled the world with me. A new story begins by pulling out a stack of reference books for ‘research corner’. A library is an organic, evolving thing, and a new novel is a marvellous chance to trawl AbeBooks for obscure biographies. In crafting my characters I read a lot of Freya Stark, Amelia Edwards and Lesley Blanch – it’s like tuning a musical instrument trying to get the tone and voice pitch perfect for the era.