Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey mystery series began as research for a biography about a writer who captivated her imagination. . .  and grew into a highly acclaimed long running mystery series centered on the life on one of literature’s “lone wolves.”

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Nicola talks about why Tey is in a class of her own, how the 20s and 30s are still relevant for 21st century women, and her Cambridge radio show.

Six

things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How Nicola became fascinated with Josephine TeyWhy imagination is truer than "facts"Dividing life between Cambridge and CornwallWhy the Between the Wars period was crucial for womenHow a famous painter inspired her latest bookWhy she loves a Virago Classics

Where to find Nicola Upson: 

Facebook: @NicolaUpsonAuthor

 Twitter: @nicolaupsonbook

Podcast: The Eclectic Light Show

What

follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for

word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

 Jenny:  Hello there, Nicola, and welcome to the

show.  It’s great to have you with us.

Nicola:  It’s great to be here, Jenny.  I can’t believe we’re actually so far apart, so this is lovely.

Nicola Upson mystery author

Jenny:  I know.  Technology’s a wondrous thing.  It’s predictable I know, but I like to begin with that "Once Upon A Time" question.  Was there an epiphany moment where you thought, I’ve just got to write fiction or my life won’t be what it’s meant to be?  And if so, what was the catalyst for it?

Nicola:  Well, I feel a bit fraudulent about it, Jenny, because there wasn’t that sort of moment.  I owe it to Josephine Tey who obviously we are going to come to talk about.  The series really began about 25 years ago when I read her book The Franchise Affair and I thought it was just an extraordinary novel, so different from any of the ones written by her contemporaries and I wanted to find out more about her, because as much as we analyse Tey she has a wonderful characterization, a brilliantly rich sense of place, but there was just that voice. 

It’s less hard to quantify than those reasons.  And I found out that she, in her lifetime, was known just as well, if not better, as a playwright.  She had several hits on the West End stage, one in particular called Richard of Bordeaux, and I thought it was very strange that somebody who had achieved as much as she had done in those two very different spheres hadn’t had a full-length biography written about her. 

So that’s what I set out to do.  I’d only written non-fiction up to that point, I’d done some arts journalism and an art book and a theater book and it was the Tey biography that I wanted to do.  But as you probably know she was a very private woman, she rolled the carpet of her personal life up quite closely and cleverly behind her and eventually the gaps became as intriguing as the facts. 

Josephine Tey - author of brilliance

It was actually my partner Mandy who said to me one evening – we were staying in a National Trust holiday cottage on a beautiful Cornish estate and, yes, we had had a glass of wine or two – and she said to me “Oh for God’s sake, just make it up” and that really is how the series started – to tell a truthful picture of Tey’s life through a series of fictional murder mysteries in the genre that we know and love her best for these days.  So purely by accident to answer your question, and if it weren’t for Josephine Tey I don’t know that I’d have written fiction a...