A literary lunch with novelist Victoria Hislop in Tunbridge Wells

Literary Lunch with Victoria Hislop

Hotel du Vin

Tunbridge Wells

Sissinghurst-based novelist Victoria Hislop has become a publishing phenomenon in the space of just a few short years.

Her debut novel, 2005's The Island, held the number one slot in The Sunday Times paperback chart for eight consecutive weeks and has since sold more than a million copies.

The 49-year-old's follow-up, The Return, has also enjoyed a spell at the top of the best-seller lists since its release in paperback last month.

The book is set during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and explores the conflict through the eyes of the fictional Ramirez family. Victoria spent time researching the story in Spain and found it a very delicate subject for Spaniards to this day.

The mother-of-two – a former travel journalist and wife of broadcaster and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop – spoke to Go! about the book ahead of her appearance at a literary lunch as part of the Tunbridge Wells Music Festival.

Do you enjoy speaking at literary lunches?

"I do enjoy them. Writers spend a long time locked inside a room and inside their own heads and I like meeting people so it's a very good opportunity. I genuinely like people's feedback, their comments and the questions they ask."

What will you speak about?

"I will be talking about the Spanish Civil War in a historical way. I think people are sometimes surprised as they don't know that's what they're going to get, but that's the background to my novel The Return. It was a three year period of conflict and a lot of English people don't know that much about it."

What kind of questions do you get asked in the Q&A sessions?

"There are a lot of people who do some writing of their own or have stories in their desk drawers and people are interested in how you set about the technical side of it – how you get your information, what inspires you in the first place."

How are sales of The Return going?

"It was number one for three weeks which was very exciting, but then it got knocked off by Dan Brown last week. He does have a film out!"

Are any Hislop film adaptations in the pipeline?

"There's always talk about films and I never let myself get excited because the chances of getting a film out of your book are so minimal. There is somebody interested at the moment but watch this space."

Have you begun work on book number three?

"It's in its very early stages. It will be set in another warm Mediterranean location as I'm attracted by places I want to go and do some research in, which is very selfish in a way. For instance I don't think I would want to go and spend time in Greenland. It will be somewhere warm but I can't say where."

Could Kent inspire a future novel?

"To be truthful, writing about where you live would involved creating characters that people might identify with and I'm quite wary of doing that. I might inadvertently turn someone I know in Cranbrook or Tunbridge Wells into a character in my novel and I think that might put me on dodgy ground."

Do you do your writing at home?

"Pretty much all of it, except when I'm travelling. And I do a lot of historical research in the British Library in London.

You won't have to travel far on June 11 though.

"I'm looking forward to coming to Tunbridge Wells but then I often do come to Tunbridge Wells! It has literary associations – Thackeray was born there – and there's always an appreciative audience."

By Oliver Frankham

Thursday June 11 at 12.30pm

Tickets £39.50 including Champagne reception and two course lunch. For bookings contact Maria Lemont, 60a Westwood Road, Tunbridge Wells TN4 8TP or phone 01892 549452