I loved writing this novel and have become particularly fond of my hero – the gorgeous Greek gardener, Milo. And isn’t it a fabulously summery cover? Makes you want to buy a one-way ticket to the Mediterranean, doesn’t it?

What’s been really exciting about this novel is that Roy and I got to see it being printed at Clays. This is something I’ve never seen before and the experience was magical and surreal. To see so many of my books all at once was just incredible and the process was fascinating and you can watch the video we made here!

And, if you like your books in electronic form, Wish You Were Here is available for a short time at just 99p from Amazon!

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I recently had the very great privilege of meeting and interviewing Dora Saint’s daughter, Jill, and she let me ask her some questions about her mother and her writing.

Growing up as the daughter of Miss Read, were you aware of the popularity of your mother’s books?

Yes, because the first one – Village School – made quite an impact. It got a lot of publicity. I don’t think it’s what you would call a bestseller these days but it did make an immediate impact and, later on, it was set for CSE exams.

Can you tell us a little bit about how your mother wrote her books? I believe she wrote longhand in exercise books? And did she have a favourite place to write or a set timetable?

Yes, she did. As soon as my father had gone off to work, and I to school in the earlier days, she would settle down to write for most of the morning. I think, in those days, there was probably a midday post so she would go and catch that if necessary and then she would finish at teatime when we came home. She did less in the school holidays but she might have to do a bit because she was doing things other than books, of course, so some of them had deadlines.

She was still teaching at this time, I believe?

She was, yes. She taught at Peasemore School only for about a term, I think, perhaps two, but it was a one-teacher school in those days – that must have been in the early 50s and I think that was a big influence on the general topography of Fairacre School.

Do you have a favourite book of your mother’s? 

I think Winter in Thrush Green is really my favourite – I’m not sure why – the cover with the vicar battling his way across the green in the wind.

And did your mother have a favourite book or character?

I don’t think so. I did once say to her, ‘Did you ever have a character that got away from you?’ and she said, ‘Yes, Mrs Pringle.’ That was the only one and she did, of course, write a book just about her.

Today, authors are expected to Tweet and be on Facebook and interact with readers. What was your mother’s experience of publicity? Did she enjoy book signings and meeting readers? Was she expected to do a lot of publicity?

She did quite a lot of book signings, yes. She didn’t ever do anything big like tours to America or anything but she did go pretty much all over the country if it was in easy reach. She did quite a lot of joint signings with Dick Francis because they had the same publisher and they got on very well. I used to call them ‘The Dick and Dora Show’. I don’t think she particularly enjoyed it but she was always very grateful to her readers, naturally, and we made some very good friends who have stayed in touch.

In Village Diary the dedication reads “To Jill – the first reader” – did you get to read all your mother’s manuscripts before they went to the publisher and did you ever make suggestions?

Yes, I read them all. That’s what that refers to – because I read Village School in manuscript – and the rest. If I saw anything obvious, I would ask her but I don’t think I made any actual suggestions – just in one of them she’d called the boy hero two different names and I said, ‘Is this child Stephen or Simon?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know – what have I called him?’ And I said, ‘Both,’ and she said, ‘Oh, let’s have Stephen. Go through and cross out Simon, would you?’ But no actual suggestions, really, just an odd typo I might have seen.

I adore the JS Goodall illustrations for the books. What did your mother think of them and did she get to meet the artist?

He was actually her suggestion. The publishers asked her if she had any ideas for illustrators  and there was somebody she’d seen who just signed ‘JSG’ and Bob Lusty who had commissioned her originally, laughed and said, ‘That’s exactly who we had in mind.’ So they got him. They worked well together too. They were both punctual people. They got their work done on time. It must have been a publisher’s dream actually because they mostly delivered early and, yes, we did meet him several times. He lived not all that far from my parents in Wiltshire.

When your mother retired from writing, did she miss it?  Did she secretly scribble ideas down?

No, she said not and, as her sight got worse, I said, ‘If you have any good ideas and you want to dictate them to me, I’ll happily type them up or do whatever you want with them,’ and she said, ‘Thanks, yes I will, but I can’t think of anything at the moment.’ So I honestly don’t think she really did miss it by that time. I think she’d had enough and she’d brought it to a nice conclusion with Miss Read retiring.

Yes – the final Fairacre book was called A Peaceful Retirement and that was a clear message to the public, wasn’t it?

Yes, it was indeed. She’d planned it, I think, and she’d had enough. She was in her early eighties by that time.

As well as fiction, your mother also wrote a cook book. Was she passionate about food and did she like entertaining guests?

Yes, but in quite a small way. My parents didn’t do formal dinner parties or anything but they often had their own close friends round to a meal. I think she was what was known in the old days as a good plain cook. She baked well but nothing very elaborate but she was good. In fact, when the cook book was suggested – I can’t remember whether by her or the publisher – Anthea Joseph said, ‘Are you greedy enough to write a cook book?’ Turned out she was!

She also wrote children’s books and 2 volumes of autobiography. What was she happiest writing?

What she really liked doing – which is out of fashion at the moment – and what she was very good at – was the light essay. She wrote for Punch and The Lady and one or two journals of that sort and they’re very good. But I think fiction, probably. She had the idea for the autobiographies and went ahead with them.

Which authors did your mother admire and enjoy reading?

Jane Austen, Trollope, a lot of the lighter ones – I’ve gone completely blank having said that…

She’s often compared to Barbara Pym.

Oh, yes, she did like her and right towards the end of her life when she was only really having audio books – her sight had gone – she used to listen to Barbara Pym again. The one thing she said she would have died happy had she written it was The Importance of Being Earnest. She thought that was a superb piece of writing. Had she written that, she would have been quite happy to have written nothing else.

It’s well known that the fictional Thrush Green was based on Wood Green but was there ever a real Fairacre?

No. It was a combination of various south country village schools – her own in Chelsfield in Kent, Chieveley and Peasmore in Berkshire and other places she’d gone on supply teaching. It was a real mishmash of any south country village, really. It was downland country – nowhere in particular.

In the Fairacre books, Miss Read is a keen gardener. Did your mother enjoy gardening? And did she ever grow Miss Read’s dreaded marrows?

Yes, she did garden. She wasn’t a passionate gardener but my parents both kept the garden up and chose things and planted them and dealt with it themselves until they got much older. Can’t remember marrows. I dare say we did.

I wonder where the marrow story came from in the Fairacre books!  I love the idea of a single woman being inundated with these huge vegetables! It really tickled me.

It probably happened! Chieveley was a bit like that. Everybody knew everybody and would hand over surplus produce.

Another thing I adore is the nature walks that the children go on in the Fairacre books. Was your mother a great walker?

Yes, she was. I don’t mean they’d get dressed up and go out all day along the Ridgeway but they would walk most days around the village.

The Miss Read books are often portrayed as gentle and comforting reads but they often dealt with serious issues like rural poverty, domestic violence and education. Do you think your mother’s work got the credit it deserved?

I think it has more recently – people thinking of it more as social history. A lot of people who go on the Denman courses – where people are perhaps taking them more seriously than the average reader – point out that the novels aren’t just escapism.

Your mother writes so well about village communities. How important was it for her to be a part of a small community and would she ever have considered living in a town or city?

It was very important to her, and the second autobiography, Time Remembered, really sums up her feelings about moving to the country – that she belonged there. There’s a very moving passage where she first arrives at the village – that’s very poignant and very much sums it up, I think. She started teaching in London – she was a Londoner by birth and upbringing, and her first teaching jobs were in London but she always was a countrywoman at heart.

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Dragon Naturally Speaking is a voice recognition software which means that, instead of typing, you dictate your words via a headset into your computer. It’s strange to use at first especially if you’re a touch-typist like me but it’s very easy to train and it takes the sting out of a hard day at the computer.

I can highly recommend it. It’s not perfect, of course, and it does make some very amusing errors sometimes like the time I was writing a short story about a “grey cat” which was transcribed into a “Greek hat”.

Hmmmm, maybe I should write a story about a Greek hat one day…

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But look how beautiful it is…

I love the patterns it makes in the ploughed fields and how the trees appear ghost-like in the distance and, within an hour of the first snowflake, the churchyard at Stoke by Nayland was a glory in white.

But, all the same, I can’t help wishing for spring. It’s been such a very long winter…

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As ever, the RNA threw a pretty fabulous party and here I am with the lovely, Belinda Jones, a fellow shortlisted author.

And here I am with the other nominees. What a lovely bunch of writers we were!

And here’s the shortlisted books for Best Romantic Comedy. I was so proud to see The Runaway Actress there!

The room was filled with glamorous writers, agents and editors and here I am with my own lovely agents, Annette Green and David Smith.

And, presenting the awards were TV’s Richard and Judy – book champions and writers themselves now.

It was a wonderful evening and BIG congratulations to all the winners especially Sophie Kinsella – one of my favourite writers – who won the award for outstanding achievement.

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Illustrated with photographs throughout, Escape to Mulberry Cottage is the first installment in a series of books about our new lives in the country and follows us as we leave the London suburbs for rural Suffolk with ex-battery hens in tow.

And I’m absolutely delighted with the cover image by the fabulous artist, Liam O’Farrell. It’s a painting of our own dear Molly the spaniel and features some rather wonderful hens too. What do you think?

And here’s a lovely quote about it from bestselling author, Leah Fleming:

‘Victoria Connelly is writing in the tradition of Miss Read and bringing the pleasures of the countryside to a whole new generation.’

I do hope you all enjoy Escape to Mulberry Cottage and, if you’d like a taster, click here for an extract.

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I adore his writing and I’m a huge fan of his Larkin books. The Darling Buds of May is my favourite novel and I can’t get enough of his Uncle Silas stories either.

I’ve been collecting some lovely vintage Penguin editions of his short stories and novellas recently and have just read The Watercress Girl and Other Stories – a delightful collection. What H E Bates does so well is to capture perfectly a moment in time – be that a childhood game or the moment somebody falls in love for the first time. His style is understated and yet richly descriptive, it’s filled with warmth and humour, and nobody captures the English countryside and the changing seasons quite like him.

What I also love about H E Bates was how he wrote pretty much everything – going where inspiration led him from short stories to novellas, serious novels set during the war to the light-hearted romps of the Larkin family. He refused to be pigeon-holed. If a writer tried to do all that now, they’d get into awful trouble with their publisher or be told that they should write under at least three different names so as not to confuse their readers.

Thankfully, though, that’s changing because of the ebook revolution. Authors are gaining more freedom to write and publish what they want and the popularity of the short story and the novella is fast rising. We’re living in exciting times.

But, although I adore my Kindle and have fully embraced ebooks both as a reader and a writer/publisher, I still return to my beloved paperbacks and, for me, nothing beats the moment of choosing the next one to read from one of my bookcases. The act of taking it down, of admiring the artwork, of inhaling the decades-old pages cannot be matched. So long live the paperback.

Now, which H E Bates title shall I read next …?

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The lucky TV presenter got to hold a rare first edition of Pride and Prejudice at The Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton – what a treat!

So, Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice, and may you live to celebrate many more anniversaries and continue to delight readers in the centuries to come.

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Now, what on earth am I going to wear…?

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And here’s a sneaky peek at the blurb:

Sun, sea and secrets…

A week on the sunny Greek island of Kethos is just what Alice Archer needs, even if she has to put up with her difficult sister. Stella’s tantrums and diva-like demands are a fair price to pay for crystal-clear waters, blue skies and white clifftop villas.

When Alice meets Milo, a handsome gardener at the Villa Argenti, for the first time she suddenly feels beautiful, alluring and confident. But is it just holiday magic or will the irresistible pull between Alice and Milo survive against all odds?

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