Queen of the ghost story heartbroken by love split
SUSAN HILL is such a captivating novelist that a stage version of her gothic ghost story The Woman In Black is still running in the West End after 27 years.
The 73-year- old author’s personal life, however, has even more gripping twists and turns.
I can disclose that Hill has split up with her girlfriend, scriptwriter Barbara Machin, 65, who created the BBC’s hit crime drama Waking The Dead.
Hill had left her husband of 38 years, Shakespearean scholar Professor Stanley Wells, before moving to Norfolk with Machin in 2013.
‘Susan is devastated and heartbroken,’ one of her friends tells me. ‘Barbara announced out of the blue that she was leaving her. It’s very sad. Susan still loves her and hopes she will see sense and come back.’
It is understood that Machin has sought comfort from outspoken Left- wing comedienne Rhona Cameron, 50, who was once accused of ‘outing’ her former partner, The Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins, on television. Perkins was not openly gay at the time.
Machin is believed to have been introduced to Cameron last October at the London Screenwriters’ Festival.
Cameron announced in 2009 that she was to enter into a civil partnership with former school teacher Suran Dickson, 38, who is currently on maternity leave from her job as an equality campaigner. The comedienne, who appeared on reality show I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! in 2002, seems to have been going through some emotional turmoil recently if a tweet she posted on Christmas Day is anything to go by.
‘Whatever oddity we all are and whatever absurdity we find ourselves in,’ she wrote. ‘Happy f***ing complex xmas from me.’
Born in Dundee, Cameron was adopted and brought up in Musselburgh, a small town just outside Edinburgh. After winning the So You Think You’re Funny? award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1992, she went on to write and star in BBC sitcom Rhona, which was panned by critics and scrapped after one series.
In an interview she once confessed: ‘I have led a very sexually promiscuous life and it’s not a good thing.’
HILL previously lived in the Cotswolds with Professor Wells and their two daughters. The couple were described as members of the ‘Gloucestershire mafia’ of well- connected writers and socialites, including ‘bonkbuster’ novelist Jilly Cooper.
A film adaptation of The Woman In Black, starring former Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, became the most successful ever British horror film.
Awkwardly, Machin is currently adapting Hill’s Serrailler crime novels for ITV. Hill declined to comment, while neither Machin nor Cameron could be reached.