Time for a quick toot of my trumpet. The Midwinter Murder, my latest 1920s mystery, is out today! It’s been a lot of fun to write, and I’ve enjoyed getting Marjorie out of her usual London haunts into a castle on the Northumbrian coast, where she comes up against feuding families, illicit love affairs, hidden passages and the occasional ghost (or is it a selkie?) while unravelling the mystery of Lord Ashwick’s untimely death.
The idea of setting a Marjorie Swallow book in a Northumbrian castle came about after I went on a cycling tour around Alnwick. Castles lie thick on the ground in this border county between England and Scotland, where skirmishes and wars raged for centuries.
I visited some of these fortifications, including the magnificent Alnwick Castle, the dramatic ruins of Dunstanburgh, and Bamburgh Castle on its headland above the village.
When I imagined Ashwick Castle, I took elements from each of them and their history. I set the book in Embleton village, which is real (although the Sun Inn where Marjorie and friends enjoy a splendid Christmas dinner is not, sadly), and is about two miles from the ruins of Dunstanburgh. I’ve taken the liberty of locating the fictional Ashwick Castle roughly on the site of Dunstanburgh Castle.
But my links to Northumberland go back much further than that cycling trip. My father’s side of the family are from those parts, and I grew up with frequent visits to grandparents in Whitley Bay and cousins in Hexham. I loved to listen to the distinctive accents, vocabulary and speech patterns of family from Tyneside and Northumberland, so different from the southern speech I was used to. In writing The Midwinter Murder, I enjoyed rediscovering those familiar words and phrases, with the help of the Northumbrian Language Society. I also pillaged my father’s family history for names: Nesbitt was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name; Malcolm and Peggy and George are all family names I’ve used here. Read about my research into the language here.
Hidden passages and ‘priest’s holes’ were not uncommon in big manor houses and stately homes during the religious turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The National Trust has a list of the houses they care for in which you can see these hidden chambers, where a Catholic priest might once have been concealed. Naturally I decided that Ashwick Castle should have a few of these useful hiding places. I wrote more about priest’s holes here.
I particularly enjoyed researching the history of the Flying Scotsman, the daily train service that ran from London to Scotland, via Newcastle. The glamour of the 1920s steam trains took my breath away – they had beauty parlours, cocktail bars, a cinema and a luxurious dining car. Sadly my experience of taking British Rail’s Intercity 125 to Newcastle during the 1980s was a bit more prosaic, although I still loved the journey. You can find out more about the Flying Scotsman here.
For the (made-up) titles of the Embleton family, I referred to the book Titles And Forms of Address: a guide to correct use. Like Marjorie, I’m a bit shaky on aristocratic titles and who gets called what. My other guide to the aristocracy is Downton Abbey, so I hope I’ve got it right between them! Did you know how complicated the British aristocracy system of titles is? Find out more.
Overall, I had a great time researching the 1920s in Northumberland. I spent a lot of time in the British Newspaper Archive looking at local newspapers, where I discovered that cattle markets were a big thing in the run-up to Christmas, and enjoyed looking at the range of Christmas presents advertised in the local shops. 1920s Christmas research was a whole other thing!
So now the book is out in the world, which is always a strange feeling after so many months living with characters and settings, and I’m on to the next one. I’ll leave the last word about The Midwinter Murder to one of my beta reader crew, who told me: “I think of all the M Swallow books, this one kept me most consistently engaged – and the snowy isolation of the setting all added to the cosy claustrophobia!”
If that sounds like a book you’d like to try, you know what to do!
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