Author Interview

Sue Lawrence tells Caroline Lindsay how her latest cookery book helped to inspire her new historical novel

Former journalist Sue Lawrence – who trained at Courier publisher DC Thomson in Dundee – has written 19 cookery books but writing novels is now a big part of her working life.

Her latest, The Unreliable Death Of Lady Grange, is a historical novel and Sue admits she’s excited about it.

“I always loved history – both at school and university in Dundee (where she studied French) – and absolutely adore the research required for a work of fiction, and also for my cookery books,” she says.

“My latest cookery book, A Taste Of Scotland’s Islands, had me not only researching what was eaten on the remote Scottish islands in centuries past but, of course, visiting them and speaking to the locals about their culinary traditions,” she adds.

It was this research that sparked The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange.

“I found out from lobster fishermen on Harris that they go as far as the Monach Islands for their catch,” she says. “I had never heard of these islands and read up about them – and the fascinating tale of Lady Grange, who was exiled there in 1732, emerged.

“Having written three parallel timeline novels – Fields Of Blue Flax, The Night He Left and Down To The Sea – I presumed I would be continuing in the same style, but as I began to write I decided to stay firmly in the 18th Century.” Sue reveals the book took more than a year to write. “The research took a while – I spent many interesting days in the wonderful National Library of Scotland looking at everything that was written about this remarkable woman,” she explains.

“I also had to find out both from books and from interviewing Scottish historians expert in that period about style of dress, speech – and of course, since it is always my passion – about the food they would have eaten, both in high society Edinburgh and also on the remote, impoverished Hebrides.”

So what’s a typical writing day for Sue?

“Oh, to have a typical writing day,” she says, smiling. “As a doting granny, I already have one less free day a week. And then, though they are always such fun, touring around the fantastic book festivals to promote books is time consuming.

“And of course I do like to find time for other things – play the piano or go to an art gallery or climb a Munro.

“But in an ideal world, I would be at my desk very early (I’m an early bird) and write all day long, stopping for coffee and lunch... but that seldom happens.”

Sue finds writing both cookbooks and novels equally rewarding in their own ways.“With the cookbooks, I divide my time going up and downstairs between the kitchen and my study,” she says. “With the fiction, it’s on the bus to the national library for an intensive research period, then I am confined to my study.”

The Unreliable Death Of Lady Grange by Sue Lawrence is published by Saraband on March 19, £8.99.