HOW THE WICKLOW MOUNTAINS BECAME MY FAIRYTALE
She grew up entwined with the Egyptian monarchy, went to finishing school in Geneva and has a holiday home in the Cote d’Azur, but author Hannah Fielding says it is Irish sunsets that give her most of her inspiration
Y ou can immediately see why Egyptian author Hannah Fielding chose this place for her home two years ago. Even on a damp and dreary morning, the Georgian pile set on a hill in its own demesne in Wicklow screams romance.
Curving driveway, handsome trees, a sea view – and a vantage point from the grand drawing room of her greatest visual inspiration of all.
‘We have beautiful sunsets – and sunsets and dawn are my thing. You’ll find in all my books sunsets and dawns. My editors now tell me off. “Find a different scene! Enough of your dawns!”’ she laughs.
Hannah writes unashamedly Mills & Boon-style romances, set in exotic locations with hunky heroes and dreamy heroines. She’s good at it too; her second book The Echoes of Love won the Gold IPPY Award for Romance and the Silver Medal for Romance at the Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book Awards in 2014. Her third novel Indiscretion won Gold in the Fiction: Romance category of the 2015 USA Best Book Awards, and Gold at the 2016 Benjamin Franklin Awards.
Her sixth book, Aphrodite’s Tears, is out this month, and is the reason we have met today in her elegant Irish retreat — which was built in 1800 and which she and her English husband Nicholas, a solicitor, are renting indefinitely.
They also spend five months of the year at the home they own in Sainte Maxime, on the Cote d’Azur, because having grown up in the port city of Alexandria, Hannah craves the Mediterranean. ‘I don’t regard the Channel or even the Irish Sea as the sea,’ she laughs.
Hannah describes her childhood as ‘magic’. Her grandfather was a minister for the king of Egypt before the monarchy was overthrown in 1952 and theirs was a beautiful home overlooking the harbour and shared by extended family, including aunts and cousins. It ‘wouldn’t bother’ young Hannah to cook for 30 people. That sense of hospitality prevails today when a staff member opens the door to us
and takes our order for tea and coffee. Another woman brings us our hot drinks with delicious home-baked fruit cake and biscuits. The drawing room where we sit to chat is decorated with family photographs and Hannah’s collection of Japanese bronzes and Chinese ceramics.
‘My father was a great art collector and he used to take me around to auctions, even when I was just 12 years old. And I loved it. So I started collecting stuff, especially when there was the internet in 1995.’
She may be ‘living the dream’ as a romance author now but Hannah has had several incarnations, from rebellious schoolgirl to property developer to mother and, more recently, grandmother.
‘Three years ago I had no grandchildren and now I have four – twins from my daughter and two boys from my son. They’re very very sweet and I adore them,’ she says. In fact, Hannah is nursing a cold caught on the flight home from London for her latest grandson’s baptism the evening before. She adores her husband too and next year they will celebrate 40 years of marriage.
‘I met Nicholas at a cocktail party in London, it was love at first sight,’ she smiles. ‘I was talking to other people and his best friend, who became his best man afterwards, and Nicholas came and introduced himself. I was lecturing them about Nasser and how horrible things were under Nasser,’ she says, of the president who banned her family for travelling outside of Egypt from 1956 to 1968 because of their previous association with the king. Hannah was 22 when the ban was lifted.
‘I don’t know how Nicholas managed slowly to take me away from the group and we ended up by the window talking. Then he said afterwards, “Would you like to have dinner?” and we took it from there.’
She may have railed against Nasser then but Hannah is not political any more. When I ask if she had been following the story of young Irishman Ibrahim Halawa who was recently released from an Egyptian prison after four years, she replies: ‘No, I haven’t. I’m a romantic novelist and I don’t go near all of these things. They upset me too much. They interfere with my inspiration.’
Her inspiration is in nature and in peoplewatching. Once while sitting in a French café a young woman walking by caught her eye and became the protagonist in Hannah’s next novel. Another time she saw a ‘very, very, very handsome’ gypsy on a beach who ‘caught my fancy’ and became a fictional love interest.
Nicholas doesn’t feel too threatened by the adonises of his wife’s imagination. ‘He knows that he’s my only love. He knows that. He doesn’t need reassurance. I tell him all day long, anyhow.’ Besides, she clearly still fancies him. ‘He’s very tall, he’s 6ft 3, blonde, grey eyes, very handsome. He’s still very handsome actually. He makes a very handsome older person.’
Back when they first met, Nicholas was a Cambridge University graduate in law and accountancy and Hannah had a BA in French literature and language from Alexandria University. She also spent a year in a finishing school in Geneva, where she studied to become a PA, before returning home to work for the American consulate in Alexandria, aged 23.
‘That was great fun. I met a lot of people, they were very charming to me, very nice,’ she says of the American diplomats. ‘They became friends of the family.’
After moving to London and meeting Nicholas, the pair settled in Egypt, where they married and welcomed son Christopher and daughter Alexandra. For ten years they lived in Hannah’s homeland, while Nicholas built his law practice, before moving back to England to send their children to boarding school. They bought a large house in Kent and Nicholas founded what has become a large corporate law firm dealing mainly in privatisation-acquisitions in Poland, commuting home at weekends.
Keeping busy while he was away, Hannah began buying run-down cottages in the area – ‘one or two a year’ – doing them up and renting them. She still owns some and has sold others.
‘It was really, really fun. I loved it and I missed Nicholas of course but we spoke to each other on the telephone every night and he never missed a weekend. He came back whether there was snow or whatever. He found a way to be there always for me at the weekend.’
Pining for the Mediterranean, Hannah would rent a summer house on the Cote d’Azur where they would bring the children and lots of their friends. They fell so in love with the area they eventually bought a house there too.
Always a lover of storytelling from the time she invented tales for her governess as a child, Hannah began to concentrate on writing.
‘When we bought that house in France I started to write seriously. I wrote in French first and then I translated it,’ she explains. Growing up, Hannah spoke English with her parents, French with her governess and Arabic with their staff. Her voice is still heavily accented.
‘In 2010 I had written two books and I was starting on my third and my husband told me, “Enough of this. You’re going to try and have yourself published”.
‘I was afraid of being rejected. I hesitated but then I took the plunge and I was lucky enough with Burning Embers to get an American publisher, Omnific, who gave me my first chance. But I had to go to the States so I found it difficult and so after that I tried in England and I got LWP as a publisher.’
When their son Christian recently took over the business in Poland, you might have expected Nicholas to retire and enjoy the fruits of his success. But no, he set his sights on Ireland.
‘Nicolas wanted to expand,’ says Hannah. ‘He is an entrepreneur. He used to have one idea a minute. I used to call them pink clouds because his mind is never stopped, it is all the time working. He came to me one day and said, “How about going to Ireland?” I said, “What do you mean, on holiday?” He said, “No. I want to change. Christian has taken over the business mostly. I need to do something. So what about Ireland? It’s close. You can come and go and see your grandchildren. They speak English. How about that?” So I said, “Fine”. He said, “Find me a house”. So I found this house.’
Now she writes a book a year and among three waiting to be published is one set in Ireland which she wrote last year.
‘It’s a little bit more gothic because I was inspired by this house and by the crows. I think that gothic goes well with the Irish mentality – fairies and all that sort of thing. I love all that. I mean, in all my books you’ll find fortune tellers.’
The Fieldings have no plans to leave Wicklow – and those inspiring crows – just yet.
‘I think we’ll be here for a while. I don’t think forever because as we grow older we want to be next to our children and now our grandchildren. But for as long as we’re in good health,’ she says, leaning forward to knock on the table for good luck.
‘When I decided to come to Ireland people told me, “Ah, you don’t like the cold and it’s wet!” So I was coming here thinking, “It’s going to be terrible”. Your weather is better than where we were in Kent because you get periods of sunshine here during the day. You don’t have weeks on end of fog. I don’t get fog here, perhaps closer to the sea you get fog. Here we are on a hill, it’s open, it’s lighter. This house is very light. I mean, part of why I am happy here is this house and its light. I could not live in darkness, I need light. The most fabulous sunsets we have here. The sun sets there,’ she says, pointing towards the western window, ‘and the sun comes up on the sea and it’s quite pretty.’
Though she describes herself as shy and solitary – and sees her home in Wicklow as a writing retreat – she has found warmth in the local community. ‘Everyone has been so lovely,’ she smiles.
Hannah bookends her writing days with four hours spent engaging with her fans on social media. ‘I think people like my books because they can dream,’ she muses. ‘My descriptions are very, very intricate. I got some excellent reviews for The Echoes of Love but I got some one-stars also where people couldn’t finish the book. I was told, “You have a little niche and your books are very detailed. If someone is looking to read quickly, they cannot read your books. It’s like Marmite – they either love your book or they hate it”. I was very upset. Now I take it in my stride.’
How does it feel to be an award-winning romance novelist?
‘It’s quite daunting. It’s as if it’s another me. It is another me, I think. It’s my fairyland place. And I love it.’
APHRODITE’S TEARS, published by Midas, is out on January 25
“MY FATHER WAS A GREAT ART COLLECTOR AND HE USED TO TAKE ME TO AUCTIONS”