THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Author Sarah Vaughan chats to Laura Reid about her new book, the role of the media in today’s society and her novel Anatomy Of A Scandal being turned into a Netflix series.
I wanted to really explore what it must be like to be a public figure having to navigate your way and coming up against abuse and also how that might warp judgment or thinking . Author Sarah Vaughan on her latest novel Reputation.
THEIR NAMES were different, their party allegiances were different, but their stories were much of the same – female MPs facing abuse in public office.
Author Sarah Vaughan recalls reading the headlines: Conservative MP Anna Soubry being plagued by death threats and online abuse; Labour’s Jess Phillips adding multiple locks to her home after receiving hate mail and abuse; and threats being made towards her then own MP Heidi Allen, who later stood down amid the “nastiness and intimidation” she had endured as a politician.
“It just made me think, what would it be like to be living under this level of threat?” Vaughan says. “I just thought gosh how would you react to that?”
Those thoughts, in part, inspired her new novel Reputation, released next month. A thriller about perception, judgment and power, it explores the pressures faced by women in public life and as teenagers bullied online through social media.
“At the same time (as the female MP abuse headlines), I was realising what a wild west teens have to navigate and how vicious the veil of anonymity allows people to be,” Vaughan says. “I was bullied at school, I had safety pins put in my bum, but nowadays it’s a different level with social media.”
Reputation, the fifth novel for former Guardian journalist Vaughan, follows Emma Webster, a high-profile MP who wants to make a difference but faces threats and trolling as she tries to work in the public eye. She finds herself accused of murdering a tabloid journalist, who has discovered a secret about her teenage daughter and the tale follows Emma as she learns how far she will go to protect both their reputations.
“I wanted to really explore what it must be like to be a public figure having to navigate your way and coming up against abuse,” Vaughan says. “And also how that might warp judgment or thinking and make you really anxious, whether you would behave rationally under that pressure.”
Vaughan will introduce the new novel when she speaks at an event at Leeds Central Library next month. Part of the library’s Breaking the News Programme, the talk will also see Vaughan reflect on her experience of being a journalist and the role media plays in our lives today.
“In a world where we can get all this free information on the net, we need more than ever a press that we can believe in and that is not working on behalf of institutions and elites, that is challenging what’s going on and is balanced and considered,” she says.
“I think that we’re seeing the importance and validity of the media at the moment,” she adds, referring to the role of journalists in bringing to light the ‘partygate’ scandal and holding those in power to account.
“Good, trustworthy journalism, committed to seeking out the truth, is more important than ever... And the way in which journalists protect their sources gives the confidence for other people to come forward,” she says.
Vaughan, 49, read English at the University of Oxford before embarking on a career in journalism. She trained with the Press Association and then spent 11 years with The Guardian asa news reporter, health correspondent and political correspondent before leaving to freelance and write fiction.
It wasn’t until she turned 40 that she started the latter in earnest, publishing her first novel in 2014 and her second two years later. Both women’s fiction, by her own admission they “didn’t do very well”. Her third, and her first courtroom thriller and political drama, Anatomy Of A Scandal, became an instant international bestseller and has since been turned into a TV series, launching on Netflix in April.
Following a Westminster politician whose marriage begins to unravel after he is accused of sexual misconduct, and exploring issues such as consent and entitlement, Anatomy was written by mother-of-two Vaughan from 2016.
“I was suddenly really aware that the things I had experienced from my teens onwards, I didn’t want my daughter to experience,” Vaughan reflects.
The following year came the exposure of numerous sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein and the huge momentum of the #MeToo movement on social media, through which people around the world highlighted their experiences of sexual abuse and harassment. “I sold [Anatomy] a year before the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke so I was ahead of Me Too,” Vaughan says, “but I just felt really strongly that I wanted to write about entitlement, wanted to write about consent.”
“I write about things that really matter to me as a working mum,” she continues, “and as somebody who, like I would say 99 per cent of women in their forties, has had various Me Too experiences along a whole continuum.”
The Netflix adaptation of Anatomy stars Sienna Miller, Rupert Friend and Michelle Dockery. It was filmed during the pandemic, with crews on set during “the really grim third lockdown, which I found really hard”, Vaughan says. “There was this parallel world cracking on with filming. That was just surreal and wonderful and absolutely affirming, knowing that there was so much energy and effort and creativity going into this even in the depths of the pandemic.”
The story, she muses, is as topical as ever. “On one level Anatomy is about a rape trial and consent and someone using their power over somebody else but really it’s about the scandal of entitlement, people believing they can break the rules and behave the way they want to, and actually that couldn’t be more current.”
Vaughan’s experience as a journalist, especially in the corridors of power, has helped to shape and inspire her work. It has also been a gift, she says, when it comes to exploring the difficult themes that run through her novels; topics like coercive control, gender politics, revenge porn and postnatal anxiety. “I think having been a journalist, I can use the skills I have there in researching and couple them with my imagination and hopefully produce something powerful,” she says.
“Sometimes you can also be more powerful in fiction as you can push things to extremes. Thankfully we aren’t hearing about female MPs who are standing trial for murder following a campaign of abuse but I suppose I’m pushing the idea to make a point. Although I don’t set out to think I’m going to write a book about revenge porn and why people shouldn’t do it, that’s not my motivation at all, but I’m writing about things that matter to me.”
“Fiction’s first duty,, I suppose, is to entertain and distract,” she adds. “But I want to write books that provoke people and make them feel things.”
Reputation is out on March 3. Anatomy Of A Scandal launches on Netflix on April 15. An evening in conversation with Sarah Vaughan will take place at Leeds Central Library on March 10. Visit www. ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/ leeds/leeds-central-library/sarahvaughan-reputation