Nancy Revell’s family saga

Karen Neville

Sunday Times bestseller, Nancy Revell who lives in Witney, talks about the inspiration for her latest offering, A Secret in the Family a family saga set in the fictional Cuthford Manor

As an author, whenever a new book is published, I’m often asked where my inspiration comes from. Sometimes that inspiration will have come about after researching what was happening at that particular time in history – like with The Cuthford Manor trilogy, the idea came to me after reading about the demise of many of the country’s stately homes post war. 

The series, The Shipyard Girls, which ran to 12 books, was inspired when I chanced upon a lone article about the forgotten women of WW2 who swapped their high heeled shoes for hobnailed boots, their pinnies for overalls, and went to work building ships. I passionately wanted to bring these incredible women to life.  

Without fail, though, every novel I pen is motivated and inspired by what makes my characters tick – what drives them, what causes them to behave the way they do, what makes them the people they’ve become, and how events which happen to them during the course of their lives changes them. 

Family dynamics and dysfunction have also always been a draw for me, and the latest book, the second in The Cuthford Manor series, A Secret in the Family is about a mother, who abandoned her children to run away with her lover, only to turn up out of the blue eight years later. Her arrival – and her reasons for coming back into their lives – has far-reaching (and unexpected) repercussions for all those at the manor, especially for her middle daughter, Marlene. I have to say that I really loved writing this novel as so much of the story concerns the mother-daughter relationship – something I find endlessly fascinating. 

Before I started writing fiction, I was a journalist, and it was those at the centre of the latest breaking news maelstrom which really captivated me. Why had someone done what they had done (good or bad)? How had someone been able to overcome some incredible tragedy? Interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary stories never failed to enthral and inspire. So, I guess it was inevitable when I made the crossover from writing articles to novels that it was the characters and their psychology that ended up being the foundation block and the inspiration for every book.