BEST BOOKS FOR... DIFFICULT MOTHERS

tHe author and tV scriptwriter suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life. I HAVE spent the past year living with a difficult mother. Not my own late parent, but the Duchess of Kent, who had an extremely tense relationship with her daughter, Queen Victoria.

After penning the script for ITV’s drama, Victoria, I’ve been writing a novel about the monarch’s early life, Victoria: A Novel Of A Young Queen, and have tried hard to get into the head of this woman, who by turns smothered and neglected her daughter.

On the one hand, the Duchess was so protective it was a rule in Kensington Palace that the young princess should never walk down the stairs unless she was holding someone’s hand.

But on the other, the Duchess neglected her child emotionally, being wrapped up in her adviser, the sinister John Conroy, who hoped that, by controlling the heir to the throne, he would one day control the country. In one awful scene, Conroy tries to force the 15-year-old Victoria — at the time gravely ill — to sign a paper that will make him her private secretary and give him control of her affairs.

Victoria looks to her mother for support, but the Duchess chooses to side with the man she loves, rather than her daughter. A terrible betrayal of trust, it forces young Victoria to realise the only person she can depend on is herself.

I took some inspiration from the awful Charlotte Haze in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. She falls in love with paedophile Humbert Humbert, little realising that the real object of his affections is her 12-year-old daughter, Lolita. She is so vile to Lolita that, when she dies in an accident, Lolita seems relieved and prefers living with predatory Humbert.

Perhaps the most difficult mother in all fiction has to be the mercenary Mrs Bennet from Pride And Prejudice, who thinks of nothing but finding her daughters rich husbands.

She is furious when Lizzie turns down the odious Mr Collins and threatens to disown her, only to crawl back when Lizzie snares the even more eligible Mr Darcy.

Each of these mothers puts their daughter through an emotional assault course that shapes their character.

But then, if you can survive a mother like that, you can survive anything.

Victoria: a Novel of a Young Queen, by Daisy Goodwin, is published this week by Headline review at £7.99