Claire Lorrimer on the inspiration behind her bestselling romance novels

I am delighted that earlier this year, Hodder & Stoughton reprinted four of my most popular romantic novels: The Silver Link, Last Year’s Nightingale, Ortolans, and Frost in the Sun.

The latter story was inspired by a visit to some of the Spanish battlefields of Andalucia in the 1930s where civil war tore this beautiful country apart. I was told that, unbelievably, more soldiers died in the freezing temperatures in the mountains in winter than on the battlefields, and this sparked the story of Frost in the Sun.

The idea for The Silver Link came to me by chance soon after I had moved house. I was out shopping and was cut dead by a young woman I had met briefly only recently. To my knowledge I had not given her reason to be offended. I only discovered a week later why my greeting was ignored…I had not encountered my new acquaintance but her identical twin who no one had told me existed. It started me wondering if even husbands and wives could be misled on occasions, and so the plot for the story emerged.

Ortolans is inspired by a fictional story about a real, very old house where I was often invited to play as a little girl. When I grew up, the influence that house had had on past generations intrigued me and inspired my story of the power a family home could exert over generations of the family who owned it.

Last Year’s Nightingale’s plot evolved after I read an article about Caroline Lamb’s harrowing fight in the 19th century against the law refusing a mother access to her children following a divorce, even if it had been caused by the husband’s wrongdoing.

Encouraged by my mother, herself a well-known authoress, I wrote my first book at the age of twelve but did not start writing novels until after the war during which I served as a WAAF in secret Radar work. I have been lucky in that I have never had to wait for so-called ‘inspiration’. A paragraph in a newspaper, a story a stranger tells on a train or at a party, a newspaper report, a holiday experience… something invariably sparks off a new idea which will not leave me in peace until I have written the last page. Sometimes I think I would like to retire, but then I see, hear or read something and the only way to get any peace of mind is to start chapter one, page one, and, finally, reach the end. Then I am at peace until the next idea takes hold.

Want to discover Claire Lorrimer?  Here’s a handy reading guide to her  most beloved novels.