In this episode, I’m talking to Rachel Joyce - an award-winning novelist and playwright. Over the course of a 20-year career as an actor, performing leading roles for the RSC, National Theatre and Cheek by Jowl, she was always writing. Alongside radio drama, she also wrote the Sunday Times and international bestsellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Her latest novel, Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North completes the trilogy. Rachel is also the author of the bestsellers, Perfect, The Music Shop and  Miss Benson’s Beetle.

Her books have sold over 5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into thirty-six languages.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and is now a major film - for which Rachel wrote the screenplay - starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton, due for release in April 2023,

In this conversation she shares:

• Why she found herself crying on the beach