As her latest novel hits the bookshops, Somerset-based novelist Hannah Richell tells us how she uses the county’s landscapes for plot inspiration
Of all the English counties to fall in love with, it’s Somerset I come back to again and again.
As a novelist, sense of place is deeply important to me. It’s not just where I live, work and raise my children, but it’s also a source of creative inspiration. Landscapes speak to me and shape my stories.
I write in a small studio at the bottom of my garden, in a house perched in a valley on the Somerset borders. After I’ve seen the kids off to school, I walk our dog – a boisterous working cocker, Ted – using the time spent stomping across muddy fields or along riverside paths to pick-up the threads of my novel from the day before, or to work through any sticky plot points. Then it’s time to sit down at my desk and write.
I try to do a solid three hours each morning, fuelled by coffee and the ever-present lure of the biscuit tin. Ted is good company. He snores loudly from the basket near my feet, or birdwatches through the window. There’s an apple tree in the garden which I can see from my desk. I like to mark the progress of a novel by watching the seasons shift on its boughs; blossom in spring, followed by branches heavy with summer apples, before the leaves turn and fall.
I love writing and know how lucky I am that this is my job, but it can be a lonely profession. When the solitude hits a little too hard even for an introvert like me, I take myself into Bath, to the beautiful independent bookshops and cafes, or to the markets of Frome, the vintage shops and galleries of Bruton, or to meet writing friends in Bristol. The South West is a hub for creativity in so many different forms. It’s hard not to feel inspired when surrounded by such a wealth of artistic talent.
The South West wasn’t always home. I found my way here from Buckinghamshire via a circuitous route to Australia. I lived in Sydney for thirteen years, until my husband died suddenly in a surfing accident and the UK beckoned me and our two young children home. Deep in grief, I felt the strong desire to return to England and to feel the embrace of a softer more familiar landscape. Instinct told me that Somerset would be a place of solace. A place to cocoon ourselves. A place to grieve and heal and rebuild.
Since 2016, it’s been all of those things, and more. In our earliest days of grief, the kids and I walked Somerset’s valleys and river paths, finding places of beauty and calm in villages such as Freshford, Tellisford and St Catherine’s Valley. Deep in the countryside, I felt my sense of calm and perspective returning.
It was on these head-clearing walks that I found the idea for my fourth novel emerging. Walking meandering river paths, past wisteria-clad cottages and tumbledown farmhouses, my novelist’s brain ignited. I began to imagine a fictional family in their own ramshackle house, Windfalls, where an old cider orchard slides down to meet a river below. In The River Home, the Sorrells are a family facing the inevitable ebb and flow of life. For each of them, the river of their home represents something different. Likewise, a glamping holiday on the edge of Exmoor provided the seed for my latest novel, The Search Party, a thriller focused on a group of families pushed to the edge on a wild weekend away. Landscape seems to be firmly rooted in each of my novels, the source from which each story is born.
I like to think of life now as a little like these rivers I walk beside. We are all at the mercy of an unknowable flow, weathering occasional storm floods or drought, allowing new tributaries to emerge and join. I recognise my good fortune for the peace I have found here, for the continued flow of all the moments we string together that become a life.
If where we live can shape, change and inspire us, I don’t think there is a more generous county than Somerset. I’ll always be grateful for its warm embrace, one that has offered peace and healing. One that feels for all the world like coming home.
