Jessica Fellowes -Mitford Murders

Jessica Fellowes’ Mitford Murders mysteries have all it – the famous blue blood sisters, fabulous fashion, murder – and a Downton Abbey style TV series already in the planning. Not surprising when you realize that Jessica is already the author of five best-selling Downton show guides. Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Jessica talks about mixing fact and fiction in her mysteries and how a former deputy editor of Country Life came to write murder mysteries. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How Downton Abbey led to Mitford Murders The best advice from an Oscar winning Uncle The magic appeal of the madcap 20s Important insights from a magazine apprenticeship The writers Jessica is reading right now What she’d do differently second time around Where to find Jessica Fellowes:  Website: https://www.jessicafellowes.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessicaFellowesAuthor/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessicafellowes Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/jfellowes/the-mitford-murders/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/official_jessicafellowes/ What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Hello there Jessica and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Jessica: I’m very happy to be here, thank you Jenny. Jessica Fellowes – author Jenny: You’ve had a fascinating career as the official guide to all things Downton Abbey – You’ve written five best-selling books about the TV series – and we will talk about the TV show a little later – but focusing on the Mitford mystery series – when did you decide you wanted to write fiction?  Was there any “Once Upon a Time moment – an epiphany? Jessica: I think it’s one those things that you always have in the back of your mind, that you would  like to get to. But I’ve been a big reader for a long time, and I have a lot of respect for a lot of writers and I just didn’t think I could get anywhere near to coming close to what they were doing. So it was really a question of confidence I think, as much as anything else. Then working out what my voice would be, and what era I would do. What the work of Downton Abbey did for me was it really focussed my research on the 1920’s, which is an era I had a fascination with. But having that store of knowledge after five years of working on the Downton Abbey books made me think, if I’m going to do this, I’ll do it in the 1920’s. I had somebody approach me and ask me if I’d like to write a novel, and that got me quite excited a few years before, and I sort of had a go. But I’ve been a jobbing writer for such a long time, I need the commission and I need the deadline. So it was really only once the Downton Abbey books had finished and I was thinking ‘Now is the moment.’ I was approached by an editor who asked me if I’d be interested in writing a crime series with the Mitford Sisters as the background, and what did I think of that idea. When he said that, I thought that’s it. I could just get it. That was the epiphany, that was the moment. But the main thing was he was willing to put the faith in me and have a go and he’s promised he would hold me by the hand through the process of the first novel so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself too much at the end of it! So that’s what got me off. Each time you get a bit more confident, and each time you enjoy it a little more. The red sofa – appears in many important scenes – like when Matthew is introduced as heir. Jenny: Yes, there are very strong parallels between Downton and the very famous Mitford Sisters and the sort of life they led. And having read the first two, there are various things that I see that are a crossover. I notice that one of the heroines in Downton has a secret love affair with a jazz singer from one of the night clubs. And in Bright Young Dead, there’s a jazz singer also named Jack, and there seems to be some crossover. Jessica: Gosh, the Jack thing was totally unintentional. They were probably both based on a real life black jazz singer called Hutch. He was in London a little bit later than Bright Young Dead, but I kind of thought I could get away with it. He really came to London in 1926. He was a very brilliant jazz musician, and very attractive. He quickly got a reputation for having lots of affairs with upper class women. I definitely wanted a little hint of that atmosphere – I’ll probably build on it a little bit more in the third book. But yes, there are those kind of parallels. The thing is, both Downton and the Mitford Murders- we are essentially dealing with real life and real life events. We’re not talking about aliens landing in the garden or anything. We’re trying to put our characters around people who have existed. The Mitford sisters Jenny: That’s part of the fascination of the books I think. In the first one that event is the death of Florence Nightingale’s goddaughter, Florence Nightingale Shore, who was a dedicated nurse and from a good family was beaten to death on a train. Now I imagine at that time, it was an extremely unusual thing to happen. And that murder has never actually been solved, has it? Jessica: It was, it was a big crime at the time. Lots of the people were really upset and agitated by it. She was a war nurse, and had only been demobilized for two months. Of course, we’ve just had Remembrance Day and all these commemorations, so I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately. As a war nurse, she remained in France for another year, because of course the war ended but there were so many sick soldiers who just couldn’t be moved from the hospital. So she spent another year in the hospital, even in peace time. Having gone through all of that, and surviving all of that, she takes the train from Victoria Station to go and see her friend by the sea, and is left for dead before she even reaches her destination. It was a closed door mystery. Not only did they not solve it, but there were never really any strong witnesses or credible suspects that the police investigated at the time. It remained an unsolved murder, until now of course. I was thinking of her a lot in the last few days, because I was pleased it would bring some attention to her work, because she was a very remarkable woman actually. The Mitford Murders – Jessica Fellowes Jenny: Yes. I must say, I got out a couple of the Downton books and I was flicking through them, and I came across the photograph of when the war ended and they were all standing there remembering. Then at 11 o’ clock, it was interesting just to realize that we’d only just seen that same anniversary on Sunday. Jessica: I know. Don’t you think it was extraordinary that exactly 100 years should land on a Sunday, when everyone can be available to do this commemoration properly. Jenny: Now the second one- we’re moving on in time a little, and that change in society that happened after the war. I know that Julian Fellows has called it a febrile time, where people were struggling to try and make sense of the huge loss of life and how their lives had changed afterwards. So we get into an era of very racy jazz clubs and the underground and upper classes rub shoulders in a way that perhaps before the war, they never did. You introduce Alice Diamond, a “Queen of Crime” who ran a female syndicate that they called the Forty Thieves. I think of Dickens and Oliver… Jessica: She was real. It was such an extraordinary discovery. When I was doing some more research into that particular period, as you said it was this very unusual and very intense period. On one hand, you had generations who were very much grieving for the physical lives that had been lost, but also just the way of life that had been lost because of the First World War. We also had these young people who did not remember the war before, and saw this time as an opportunity for change – it was a new decade after all. It was the 1920’s, and all kinds of slow changes that had started before WW1 and had now suddenly really escalated to where women now had the vote because there weren’t enough men. Women were going out to work to look after themselves. Socialism was very much on the rise, plus you had all this exciting new technology the Americans had been developing – cars, refrigerators. They were exporting this all over to us in England. So there was this real sense of something different happening. The breakdown of war also created a gradual breakdown in class, although not completely but just shivered the roots of it a bit. Anyway, Alice Diamond who was somebody I discovered who ran this female syndicate, Forty Female Thieves (Alice and the Forty Thieves). They were all shoplifters, and Alice Diamond was somebody who came from a very tough working class background. It was a very difficult background, but she liked to put on the “posh” as she called it. So she would dress up and go out to this night club the 43, which was a real night club. That’s where you would get the gangsters and the upper classes all shimmying together on the dance floor. I just thought that was such a wonderful opportunity for a location as well. I love dancing and I used to love going to night clubs when I was a bit younger. I’d get on the dance floor if I ever got an opportunity! But it’s something different, it’s very democratic music. When you’re all just there together, it doesn’t really matter who anyone hears, you’re all just experiencing the moment together. I think that was something that felt quite new for them. Jenny: Yes, 43 sounded amazing. I looked into it a little bit- I gather that the owner, Kate Meyrick, had an amazing backstory herself. She wrote a memoir of her life- Secrets of the 43- which was immediately banned on publication allegedly because it told tales of too many prominent people. And of course, being a journalist myself I thought- has it ever seen the light of day? Nightclub “Queen” Kate Meyrick Jessica: Yes, I’ve got it. She kind of likes to self glorify a little bit, but you know she was quite exceptional. She was this Irish woman who married a doctor, and came over to England. Something went wrong with the marriage, and she had three children to bring up and pay for their education. She kind of got into the nightclub scene. It was this sort of new thing. She got into it around the beginning of the First World War. She was cunning really. She knew how to keep the police on side so she could keep serving her alcohol, even out of hours. But she was obviously also very charismatic, because she always had everybody come. She did go to prison a couple of times, but every time she came out there would be this enormous champagne party thrown for her with judges and upper class lords, and allure dancing girls altogether. All her daughters got married off extremely well. Jenny: Yes, I heard that one married an Earl and the other a Baron. Jessica: Yes, so they didn’t do too badly out of it! Jenny: That sounds wonderful. How important is it for you to be historically accurate? How much “poetic license” do you allow yourself when you’re getting into it? Jessica: That’s a very good question. I do try to be historically authentic you know. With details like Florence Nightingale Shore and Alice Diamond, where those factual details exist with the Florence Nightingale Shore case, the court files have been destroyed. But the newspapers used to do detailed reports of inquests with transcripts of the interviews and so on. So I used a lot of those interviews. I liked to put in details that those who know will recognize as authentic. I think it kind of keeps the trust of the reader, and in some ways you’re cheating either because you can reel the reader in quite quickly when they know something is true. It’s more captivating in some way. You have to be very careful not to abuse that trust by putting in something that’s inauthentic. I do try to be as historically truthful as possible. On the other hand, when it comes to the Mitford Sisters, I’m not writing a biography. If you want to read a biography, there are masses of them brilliantly done. What I’m interested in is the gaps in between the facts that we know. What got them from one point to another, and imagining how they might have done that. So I try never to have anyone do anything that they really wouldn’t have done in real life. Jenny: Yes- I suppose the secret is it ‘could happen.’ Jessica: Yes, it could of happened. The thing is, I do think I’m allowed to do it if I like, because there’s no thing as a single historical truth. Everything has been seen from different angles by different people, with different agendas. Even the Mitford Sisters disagree with each other from minor details to major details. I think it’s allowed, to have a little look through. But the story does have to matter. I sometimes change states and things, but if I’ve ever done that, I’ve sort of said it at the end of the book. Jenny: And I read somewhere that you plan to set one book around each of the Mitford Sisters; is that the plan? Jessica: Yes, that is pretty much the plan actually. As long as everybody keeps buying them, I’ll keep writing them! Jenny: It will be interesting to me to see how you manage to infiltrate Louisa into each one, because I presume she probably will remain a permanent feature. So somehow you’ve got to find a way for her to work for each of them. Jessica: I know. It does sort of have to realistic, as far as possible. But I think I’ve got a way around it. I’m just about to embark on the third one now which will have Diana as its centre. Jenny: That will be fun! Jessica: What’s great about them is because those Mitford Sisters, each one of them represents something of that era, whether it’s the politics, glamour or the countryside or the aristocracy. Whatever it is, each one really just acts as a hook for me to hang my hat on, if you like. We can just zoom into that world quite quickly, and they sort of do half the explaining before me if you like. So Louisa (Louisa Cannon, the servant-sleuth of the series – editor note) just needs to follow them in there. She’s quite an inquisitive and daring person, and so I see no reason why she shouldn’t. Jenny: Right. And a comment has been made that you might have a bit more of a challenge on your hands when it comes to Unity- the sister who so fervently admired Hitler that she shot herself when Britain declared war, didn’t she? But sadly, she didn’t manage to finish the job. Jessica: No. I don’t know if she did that because she admired Hitler, but she knew that war would be declared and she didn’t want to see it. This was the kind of consequence – she couldn’t confront her admiration for Hitler, which was war in her own country. She was definitely a very tricky character. Perhaps what we might have said then is not ‘all quite there.’ Jenny: Do you have any personal favorites among the sisters? Jessica: I think Pamela is probably the sturdiest, although Deborah was very sweet. I know quite a few people who have met Deborah, and nobody has a bad thing to say about her. I think she was probably the nicest and the most straightforward of them all. Pamela I quite like, because she has a slight sort of edge to her. She’s quite complicated in ways that really only came to the fore later in her life. But Nancy is the one that you’d want to go out and have cocktails with. She would be the funniest I think. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of her, but you’d get the most caustic wit. But as each book goes on, I kind of find something with each one. Because you have to – although Diana is making me nervous.  Jenny: If you were going to organize a “magical mystery literary tour” for the Mitford series, where would you suggest people go? Asthall Hall – the Mitford home Jessica: Not far from where I live in England, actually. They lived in a house called Asthall Manor, which is where the Mitford Murders and Bright Young Dead is set, which is in Oxfordshire and very near a place called Swinbrook. The house itself is a private house, although every other year they do a summer sculpture exhibition in the gardens. You can go to that, and you can go to the church any other time. Swan Inn, Swinbrook – features in the Mitford Murders There’s a pub called Swan at Swinbrook, which is mentioned in the books too. That’s a real pub, and it’s really nice and very much aware of it’s Mitford legacy. So there is a pretty good place to go. If you’re in London, you should go to Mayfair and the Heywood Hill Bookshop which is where Nancy Mitford worked for a bit in the war. It’s worth popping into now. Heywood Hill bookshop – Nancy Mitford an assistant there. Turning to your wider career  . . .  Jenny: You’re a former deputy editor of Country Life and have written for many other prestigious publications. And you’ve enjoyed great success with the Downton Abbey official guide books – tell us about how they came about? Jessica: The Downton Abbey series was on television first aired in Britain in September 2010, which I remember because it was very shortly after my son was born. I watched the show like everybody else and loved it, because my uncle, Julian Fellowes, had written it. He had mentioned the show to me a couple of times beforehand, but most people in the film world are a little superstitious. Until the film is made and happening, you just don’t talk about it. All kinds of projects get cancelled at the last minute. But he had a couple of times mentioned it to me, so I knew I was excited, and I loved it. It quickly became this enormous hit, really quite astonishingly so. By about the third episode, it was being quoted in the House of Commons and so on. I was a journalist, and at that point I was a freelancer. I had left Country Life magazine; I had been there for a few years. I knew my way around big houses and so on. Anyway, my agent heard there was a deal being done between the producers of Downton Abbey and a publishing house. She said they didn’t have a writer, and perhaps I should put myself forward. So I emailed Julian and asked if he would mind if another Fellowes was on the project. I’m nothing to do with the series itself;  Julian writes the scripts and I’ve just written about the show and how it’s made, and the social history of the period. I’m not responsible for the death of Matthew – he is! So that was it. Julian endorsed the idea of me writing the books. Because they did want this social history aspect, that was what really got me excited. I wouldn’t really have been up for a making up of a book- it was going to be a bigger project than that. So it was amazing, it was great to have that work. Jenny: You would have been ideally suited with your background in Country Life.  You’ve done a lot of touring and public speaking around Downton – what is it that fascinates people most about the Downton story? Is there a common question people ask? Jessica: The most common question is probably why is the show so successful? To which you can only answer “no, we didn’t know the show would be so successful”. I mean if Julian had said in advance that he thought the show would be as successful as it was, we’d have locked him up! It would have been mad to think it could become this successful. It was unprecedented really. As to why – there’s lots of different theories. In the end, it was a very well made show which came at the right time. People needed that nostalgia, and the world was a little uncertain at the time. It was 2010, and we were all in a recession of some kind. It’s about family in the end. The family upstairs and the family downstairs. Will Lady Edith be happy? The question most viewers wanted answered. There are these kind of relationships, in the end we get to go behind the net curtains looking at something that looked gorgeous, and was beautifully acted,  very well written and funny quite often. But also for a long time until the very end of the series, the question that people would ask the most was would Edith be happy? She became this anti-heroine, and then heroine in a way, where people just wanted to be sure that she would be happy. Jenny: You’ve obviously learnt to face challenges in your daily life – I’m aware that you’re also born with impaired hearing, and you’ve really made a wonderful job of not even showing that you do have difficulty hearing. But is there one thing have you done perhaps more than any other, that is the secret of your success? Jessica: It is keeping on at it, I think. Julian was always very instructive for me from an early age, because he didn’t get his success till quite late in life. He was 52 I think when he got his Oscar. Up to that point, he had had an “OK” career- he was never out of work, but he wasn’t this great big star who won an Oscar. That transformed his life overnight. Gosford Park Oscar, 2002. But what he taught me from that was him saying “you must always be prepared for when that door opens for you. Be prepared so you can walk through it”. So he always had projects on the go, and he was always writing something, knocking on peoples’ doors, trying different things out. I think just to not be entitled, and not feel like this success is just going to come to you naturally. When something successful happens, you’ve got to think how can I build on this; how can I make this last? So you just have to be disciplined. And I think what has been great for me as a novelist in lots of ways is having started as a journalist and a freelance writer, I’m used to creating my own work and coming up and sitting down at my desk every day to write. I just write something. Some days you write something unbelievably terrible, but at least it’s something you can work with the next day. Then you can have a day where it feels like it has gone right. But you’ve just got to sit at your desk! It’s not going to happen unless you sit at your desk! Turning to Jessica as reader  Jenny: The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to read series . So – turning to your taste in fiction who do you “binge read” ? Any recommendations for listeners? Jessica: Well I read fairly widely generally. I’ve actually shied away from series a little bit, because I don’t like to get too committed- you know there’s so many things on my pile of books that I’ve agreed to read. There are so many writers that I go back to, not as a series but when you just go back and read them it’s like getting into a warm bath. It’s just easy and fun. So Joanna Trollope is one of those. I love her books, and I’ve just read her latest one, An Unsuitable Match. Also been reading a lot more crime recently- almost from an analytical point of view, to read both the good and bad you know. I try and work out what works and what doesn’t work. Some good ones I’ve read most recently are Our House by Louise Candlish, that was good. Also Val McDermid and A Place of Execution. Val McDermid is just a brilliant crime writer, I just read her again and again. Val McDermid – Latest In terms of non crime, recently I’ve just adored Curtis Sittenfeld. She’s the most brilliant writer I think. She’s got a book of short stories out at the moment called You Think It, I’ll Say It. I love American Writers- I do have to say they are great storytellers. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout– I was a little late to the party with that one, but it is beautiful. Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn is a crime, but that was good. I keep a little ledger of books that I’ve read. I’ve kept it since I was 16, because my memory is so bad with titles and authors. When I see it, I can remember how I felt about it, but I can never call anything to mind straight away. Amanda Craig The Lie of the Land But if you want a really good book on people and politics in England at the moment- at by political, I mean small politics rather than government politics- The Lie of The Land by Amanda Craig is just brilliant. Particularly with Brexit and everything going on- if you want to understand what people are really like, that’s fantastic. Jenny: That sounds great. I’m a bit the same as you – I mean I absolutely insist on reading one of the books of everybody I interview, sometimes two. But if they’ve done a whole series of six or seven, there’s no way I’m going to be able to read them all, you know. Jessica: Yes, it’s too difficult! I go away to Ireland for a few weeks every year, and that’s a great place to read. It’s very pleasurable, but I read a lot of books for research. So I’m seeking out for out of print books usually. I try as much as possible for my research to be first hand accounts from the time, rather than a historians review just to get those fun details. Circling back to the beginning at the end   Jenny: At this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change – if anything? Jessica: I’d do more radio I think. I love radio, and I think I didn’t pursue that when I could have. But at the same time, I’m very much a believer that you make your choices in life, and this is where you are. It’s not to late for me to start having a go at it. Jenny: Definitely not – you could start a podcast! Jessica: Certainly! I feel really lucky to be where I’m at. I got such a big break with the Downton Abbey books. I think for all of us with Downton is anybody who was connected with the show, it was a bit of a life changing thing. That has led to this, if you see what I mean. Working on Downton books opened doors.  Jenny: What is next for Jessica the writer? Jessica: Well at the moment, very immediately I need to write the third book in the series. That will be called Cruel Bodies, focussing on Diana Mitford. That will be out in a year’s time more or less. And now I’m starting to get a bit of confidence as a writer, I tend to think about other projects. I’d love to do TV scripts. The series is being developed as a TV show hopefully.The script is being written by someone else, but talking to various parties it is looking pretty great. So that would be the perfect opportunity for me really to get in and understand the world of TV in a different kind of way. I’d love to write TV scripts- that would be fabulous. Jenny: It’s a total natural for a TV series, isn’t it? I would imagine having the association with Downton, it would have given you some appreciation of what a TV series requires. Jessica: Yes, definitely. Although I think you have to write the book, and I’ve realised that as I’ve gone on- they will always just adapt what they need. They’ll make the changes for a TV series. But I was excited, because it’s a very visual period. It’s just such a good looking period- we want to see it brought to life. Jenny: I’m already excited about the thought of it. It will be just great. Where can readers find you on line? Jessica: I have a Jessica Fellowes Author page on Facebook, which I keep up to date in times of events and books and articles and so on. I’m also @jessicafellowes on Twitter. I use that less, but I am there. And @officialjessicafellowes on Instagram. I called it that because it just amused me that there could be an unofficial Jessica Fellows out there. I do like Instagram actually, it’s quite fun. The main problem is not distracting myself with these things when I’m meant to be writing my books. But they are there. I love interaction with readers, so any questions, fire them away. I love it. Jenny: Thank you so much for your time. It was great to talk, and I do think your series is going to be fantastic. Jessica: Thank you Jenny, that’s lovely. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]