Launching Honesty - by Wendy Robertson

Launching Honesty !

So how did I end up, champagne in hand, in front of a hundred-and-fifty people in a marquee off a walled garden, talking with my usual intensity about my writing, surrounded by blue balloons in the shape of a heart?

Each novel I write, although it has its own particular stamp, is for me entirely different from its predecessors. And I like to give each novel its own particular sweet send-off into the great outside world. So the launches, tailored to each particular novel, are rather like christenings.

In the case of HONESTY’S DAUGHTER, however, the launch was more like a wedding. All week I was looking at the changing September skies and wondering if we would have a fine day. This was because the launch was set in the walled garden of Whitworth Hall and involved all my guests walking across the deer park to the Hall to have afternoon tea.

Whitworth Hall, the ancestral home of the Shaftos, is a small Durham manor house, and was the initial inspiration for HONESTY’S DAUGHTER. This house – transformed to Benbow Hall in the novel – became the central focus of the story, although the various members of the Benbow family travel far and wide in the arc of the book.

The balloon filled marquee Even more central to the novel is the walled garden, tended these days by Peter who was a great help to me in my research. My work on Whitworth was facilitated by Judith Gates, one of the present owners of the Hall, which is now a country house hotel. She encouraged me to use it as a peaceful place to write, so all through last year I could be found in the glassed-in vinery at the back of the Hall, scribbling away in my hard-backed book, or rattling away on my laptop.

I also occasionally worked alongside artist FIONA HORNER who, through the year, painted 21 wonderful pictures inspired by the Hall, garden and country park surrounding it. We displayed some of her paintings at the launch, borrowing them from her very successful exhibition at the Tom McGuinness Gallery at Bishop Auckland Town Hall.

Fiona was at the launch, with Joe, her little boy, and husband, Dan. My family was there, including my grandson Angus (right) who dealt with all these strangers with aplomb. Daughter Debora (the writing cat lover) talked to everyone with her usual great style, her husband, Séan, took these pictures and my son, Grahame, beamed encouragement from half way back in the marquee.

Writers Liz Gill, Helene Wiggin, Pat McGaughey, Benita Brown, and Pat Barker all came in professional, friendly support. Even the local MP Derek Foster came. My friend and agent Juliet Burton was there and kept me laughing and steady through the whole weekend.

But as important as all these were the many loyal readers and friends who always come to support me and always buy or borrow my novels and know where I’m coming from as a writer.

So I was set to launch HONESTY in style. I was introduced to the gathering by my friend Judith Gates whose generous spirit was the greatest resource in the writing of this novel. Then I talked for a while about the ways in which fact and fiction emerged in the characters and adventures in the book, supported by evocative readings illuminating the characters by another friend, Judy Otter (above).

Then we all strolled round the walled garden and across the deer park to the Hall and had scrumptious afternoon tea in the sunshine. Well everyone, that is, except me. I had my head down signing books and talking to readers for the next hour. The sweetest dedication someone asked me to write was ‘To Edith, the only woman apart from the Queen who has two birthdays.’

Now there’s a story!

PS If you’re wondering about the balloons, they were left over from a wedding the previous day. Sadly, for them, it rained…