1. When it comes to finding writing inspiration, I have two of the best jobs in the world. For 20 years, I’ve been a journalist for ITV News in Cambridge. On the road with my TV camera, I usually met people at the very best or very worst moment in their lives and it’s a privilege to help them tell their stories. I may be filming a Prime Minister, interviewing a Hollywood A-lister, or filming a surgeon performing open heart surgery. But it’s not all glamour – I once got grabbed by a drunk stranger (with no teeth) who tried to snog me live on air.
Claire McGlasson
2. My other role is teaching Creative Writing (at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education). Students join by video from all over the world and I love how often they share their lives as well as their words. One had to leave a seminar suddenly when an earthquake hit her home town – but returned to tell us she was safe. Another multi-tasked – reading her work while breastfeeding her child. And a particularly keen member of the class dialled in from his hospital bed just before he was wheeled down for surgery. Fact is very often is stranger than fiction!
3. Growing up in a place called Biggleswade, I had no idea that in the nearest town, was home to cult of women who (for almost a century) believed their leader was the daughter of God. I had walked past their row of apparently unremarkable Victorian houses in Bedford many times. But it wasn’t until I filmed a report for ITV News about Hidden Histories that I discovered the existence of The Panacea Society. I went on to write my debut novel, The Rapture, about the women - having been given access to their diaries, letters and confessions (some of them never read before).
4. I’m never happier than when I’m rifling through a dusty archive. The Misadventures of Margaret Finch was inspired by another two eccentric chapters of British history. In the late 1930s, Harold Davidson, the disgraced rector of Stiffkey in Norfolk, was defrocked by the Church of England and exhibited himself in the sideshows of Blackpool to protest his innocence. Around the same time, the Mass Observation project began a covert operation to spy on working class holidaymakers, in a bid to understand their habits. I imagined what may have happened if the two stories had collided.
5. The Misadventures… is a tribute to my grandparents who travelled the 30 miles from their home in Wigan to holiday in Blackpool every year. I keep a black and white photo of them beside me on my desk and think of their loyalty to that resort much like I remember their marriage. Though the town gradually lost the glitz and glamour of its heyday, they always saw in it (and in each other) the magic of their first impressions.
6. Now I’m working on a new novel, I’m back to losing myself in research. I like to experience as much as I can before I write. So far this book’s taken me to stay in a convent - where I found the silence difficult!
7. I’m usually reporting the news but my claim to fame is that I once appeared on the front pages of the Swedish tabloids standing with all four members of ABBA. Sheer luck but it makes a great story…
Claire a journalist who works for ITV News and enjoys the variety of life on the road with a TV camera. She lives in Cambridgeshire.
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Her latest book The Misadventures of Margaret Finch is released 6th April 2023 £14.99 hardback / ebook and audio see below for synopsis:
Miss Margaret Finch – the perfect 1930s heroine and a young woman who will carve a space in your hearts alongside Mrs Hemingway and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Blackpool, 1938. Miss Margaret Finch – a rather demure young woman – has just begun work in a position that relies on her discretion and powers of observation, when her path is crossed by the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey (aka Harold Davidson) who is the subject of a national scandal, and newspaper headlines.Margaret is determined to discover the truth about Davidson; is he a maligned hero or an exploiter of the vulnerable? But her own troubles are never far away, and Margaret’s fear that the history is about to repeat itself means she needs to uncover the truth urgently.This deeply evocative novel ripples with the tension of a country not yet able to countenance the devastation of another war. Margaret walks us along the promenade, peeks into the baths and dares even a trip on the love boat on this her first seaside summer season, on a path more dangerous than she could ever have imagined.
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