PENNY HAW ON WHY SHE WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT BERTHA BENZ

“I came about a Bertha Benz story when I was working as a journalist years ago with Business Day and we were doing some work on women in science and technology. The initial story was about how she undertook her remarkable journey.

It’s 106 kilometres from Mannheim where she and Carl and their children lived in Germany to Pforzheim, which was where her mother lived. At the time I thought, ‘Well, that’s very interesting,’ because clearly this is not something that this woman would have undertaken lightly – I mean you don’t just jump into this machine and drive off.

Bertha did the journey with her teenage sons and she undertook it without Carl’s permission or knowledge – in fact, they snuck the vehicle out of his workshop in the dark hours of the morning.

They pushed it to the edge of the town where they could start it because it was a very noisy smoking machine and then off they drove.

I was intrigued and when the opportunity arose many years later to write about another remarkable woman, to research the facts and then dig deep into who she was and the life she led. And then also, because it’s historical fiction, to imagine the thoughts and emotions and conversations and relationships. I jumped at the chance.

Her parents had been very keen to marry her off to a wealthy man from Pforzheim, which was the diamond capital, and lo and behold, she met a very poor, but very intelligent and ambitious man named Carl Benz, and he told her about his vision to create a horseless carriage. I think Bertha fell in love with his vision as much as she fell in love with Carl and that was where the story started.

She was an absolutely inspiring woman – she was a quiet feminist, she was a woman who just understood all sorts of things which Carl, although he was an inventor and an engineer and a very brilliant man, didn’t understand. Bertha was the one who bridged all those gaps.

I loved writing this book. I’m still very inspired by Bertha and I hope readers will be too.”