Interview: Richard Madeley
From the Heart
Gearing up for the release of his dramatic debut novel, Richard Madeley talks to Holly Cozens about inspiration, conquering the literary world and Winston Churchill
Some Day I’ll Find You is your debut novel, where did you find the inspiration for this story?
“I’d been thinking about writing a novel for some time but couldn’t come up with a plot I liked enough. Then one Sunday morning I came downstairs to start cooking a big family Sunday lunch and I gradually became aware that another family – a fictional one – had ‘moved in’ inside my head overnight while I slept. They were fully formed – names, appearances, where they lived – and they were in the middle of an intense but friendly argument about Hitler, around their own dining table. It was 1938 in their world and as I prepared lunch, the whole plot of Some Day I’ll Find You revealed itself. It was utterly weird.”
“Putting my own work out there feels like putting my neck on the chopping block”
Despite genre, setting, time period etc, do you find you bring bits of your own life into your writing?
“Oh yes. One of my two central characters, James Blackwell, is not just borderline psychopathic: he’s a controlling, manipulative s***. But most males have a touch of the psychopath about them so I hunted around for my inner psycho and fleshed him out to create James. It was rather fun. Diana, the other main character, is a 19-year-old Cambridge student when we first meet her so that was a bit trickier. But with a wife, daughter and 13 years presenting This Morning under my belt, I know how to get in touch with my feminine side!”
Were you nervous about the reception your novel would get after doing The Book Club, this time being on the receiving end?
“Completely. We are tasked with choosing eight to ten good reads three times a year for the Richard and Judy Book Club, in partnership with WHSmith. People seem to have decided to trust our recommendations. So putting my own work out there – and boy, does a novel have to come from the heart – feels like putting my neck on the chopping block.
With your wife Judy releasing her debut novel and it being a Sunday Times best seller, is there a bit of playful competition between you two? Or are you both simply conspiring to dominate the literary world?
“Haha, no, we’re not Mr and Mrs Genghis Khan storming the bookstores! The reason we’re both writing now is because we’ve stopped doing a daily TV show together, so we have the time for other things. Judy’s a full-time novelist now.”
So, as your debut novel is a love story, does that mean you’re a big old softie at heart?
“Yes. I have one thing in common with Winston Churchill – I am easily moved to tears by a book or play or film or piece of music. ‘I’m a terrible blubberer, ’ Churchill warned a new PA during the war. And he was. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Do you have any plans for a second novel?
“Damn right I do – I’m contracted to write it! I have two plots in my mind at the moment, but I don’t want to say any more just now.”
City Books Presents: Richard Madeley, Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, Thursday 4 July, 5.30pm, £8, 01273 464440, www.ropetacklecentre.co.uk
