6. Are you planning to continue Elisabeth’s story?
I don’t think she’d have it any other way! In the next book, we’ll see Elisabeth joined by two other Special Operations Executive agents as a (fictional) all-female Jedburgh team, paving the way for the Normandy landings.
7. Why set the book in Lisbon and not Berlin or Paris?
I was on the Eurostar, with two colleagues, heading to Paris for a meeting. One of my colleagues, knowing that I was working on a book, asked me how much research I’d be doing while we were there. The other colleague – a Portuguese man – suggested that I base my next book in Lisbon. It was a gentle nudge in the right direction, and my research drew a portrait of a country with split loyalties, precariously neutral, with a capital that, partly based on its geography, became a magnet for spies and espionage.
It was the perfect place for Elisabeth to get into mischief, but don’t be surprised if I do set a future story in Paris or Berlin!
8. Do you have a favourite character in the novel?
Isn’t that like asking a mum which child is their favourite? Elisabeth is my favourite, of course, but I suspect the question is really ‘who is my favourite after Elisabeth’, and the answer to that is Hubert Jones. Bertie started off with a big personality that just kept growing, and I loved writing his banter with Elisabeth, and the way he verbally fenced with Eduard. I’m not going to rule out having him show up in another story!
9. If the SOE still existed, it would have just celebrated its 80th anniversary. Why do you think there is still such interest in the work that the SOE did during the war?
I think people have always been interested in the exploits of spies – it’s wonderful escapism – and the SOE were the bad boys and girls of the spy world. They didn’t play by any established rules, and their agents were more than just spies – their remit was sabotage and subversion. They blew up trains, bridges and factories, while fostering revolt (often working with local resistance groups). They were Churchill’s Department of Dirty Tricks. He told them to ‘set Europe ablaze!’ and they did. Their real-life exploits still read better than a lot of commercial thrillers.
Fun fact: Anne-Marie Walters’s autobiography Moondrop to Gascony won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1947.
10. Do you feel that more should be done to celebrate and promote the work that female agents did during World War II? What, do you think, would be a fitting tribute that hasn’t already been done?
Yes, of course. People don’t seem that surprised when I tell them I write about fictional female spies during WW2, but they are usually shocked when I mention that there really were 39 female SOE agents who operated in France, and that 13 didn’t make it back.
That being said, there’s a lot of work going on now to promote the female agents. There are several new biographies out now, and I believe a movie is in the works about Nancy Wake (‘the white mouse’). The advocacy group Hope Not Hate has produced Heroes of the Resistance podcasts, some of which relate to female SOE agents, and this year two female SOE agents have had blue plaques raised at their former residences: Christine Granville (born Krystyna Skarbek, and the longest serving female agent of WW2) and Noor Inyat Khan (who was killed in ’44 and was posthumously awarded the George Cross).
Is it enough? No, but it’s several steps in the right direction.
11. Do you think you would have made a good spy?
I’d love to say ‘Yes!’ but the truth is closer to ‘probably not’. I’m far too what-you-see-is-what-you-get!
12. What was your favourite part of the writing process? And what did you find most challenging?
Favourite: When the story is in full swing and my characters are ‘speaking’ to me. I’m racing with them into action, and I can barely write fast enough to keep up.
Most challenging? When my invisible friends aren’t talking to me. It usually means that I’ve made a mistake somewhere and have to go back and figure out what it is, and fix it. Sometimes it’s not an obvious error, and sometimes it’s an error that has already rippled through a fair part of the story. Re-work isn’t so much fun, but the end result is always better.
13. What does an average writing day look like for you?
In the ‘new normal’ of working from home, I’ve repurposed the time I used to spend on the morning commute for writing. I normally get up around 6:30 and brew a large pot of flavoured coffee (chocolate raspberry, pecan praline, or whatever I can find) and trundle into my writing room. Don’t get excited – it’s only the spare bedroom, and these days doubles (or is it triples?) as my home office. I’ll work until about 8, before I switch hats for the day job.
Lunchtime provides an opportunity to retreat outside and do a bit of plotting while I walk or run along the canals and, once I finish work, I go back to working on the story for another couple of hours.
When I’m editing, I print the story out and edit on paper as well as on screen. I’m sure there’s a scientific reason behind it, but often I’ll pick up mistakes on paper that I won’t when I’m reading it digitally.
14. Do you listen to music while you write?
Sometimes, but not always. The music will often depend on who I’m writing about and what they’re doing. I’ve got wide-ranging (and eclectic) taste in music and probably confuse my neighbours.
15. Which books or authors are you inspired by?
Where do I begin? I’m inspired by the real women of SOE: Violette Szabo, Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville), Virginia Hall, Nancy Wake, Anne-Marie Walters, Noor Inyat Khan, the Nearne sisters, Odette Sansom, to name a few. I started binge-reading their
