Sue Lawrence on Glen Clova, her 'terrible' early novels and her 'great fondness for a Dundee pie'
Dundee-born writer Sue Lawrence has never forgotten her ties to the city and to the beautiful Angus Glens.
Author Sue's parents moved from their native Dundee to Edinburgh when the chatty writer was a baby but she says that her family have always felt:
'A strong Dundee connection – a lot of my relatives are still there.'
That link to the City of Discovery brought her back to Dundee to study French at university. Once she had graduated, her first writing job was as a journalist for DC Thomson publication My Weekly.
Those ties have created a close affinity with the city and have made her a frequent visitor ever since.
Now she is passing that connection on to another generation: 'We take the grandchildren on the train now.
'And just going over the bridge somehow makes my heart sing. Dundee is in such a beautiful place.'
She has been delighted to see the redevelopment of the city's waterfront in recent years. 'I mean the V&A is just an astonishing building, it looks so striking,' she points out.
'You know, one of my novels – The Night He Left – was actually about the Tay Rail Bridge disaster.'
The writer enthuses about spending time with family on the redeveloped shoreline. 'My sister lives in Arbroath so we met up with her and my cousin's grandchildren and went to the fantastic Dundee Science Centre.
'It was a lovely sunny day so then we went for a picnic on the urban beach. It was just great to have that facility right in the middle of the city where you can enjoy a picnic.'
With three grown-up children and five grandchildren aged between eight and one, there are lots of family meet ups and celebrations to be had.
She has always been a champion of Scottish produce and cooking.
'I still have a great fondness for a Dundee pie,' she laughs, 'and I know there is great baking there. My inspiration for so much of what's in my cookbooks came from my mum, and my granny and my aunties.'
She is now the author of respected collections of Scottish recipes including New Scottish Baking and A Taste of Scotland's Islands.
Sue's passion for food shines through in her fiction, which is sprinkled with foodie references. That might be the restrictions of rationing in war time Glen Clova or French characters skilled in the art of creating something wonderful from the simplest of ingredients.
'I do always seem to have a chef in my stories!'
Unsurprising for the food writer, Sue says: 'I've always loved eating. I have really strong, vivid memories of cooking with my mother – licking the bowl of my mum's sultana cake when I was quite wee.'
Then, moving to university, 'when you are a student you have to cook, you're sharing a flat with others and you get cooking. I just really enjoyed it.'
Sue spent a year out in France, which saw her live and work in Lourdes in the Pyrenees. 'It was quite something,' she recalls. 'Quite a place to be and I learned more and more about how the French are just obsessed by food!'
When she graduated, she went to work as a journalist and again loved to cook for her flatmates.
Sue says that she entered BBC MasterChef, 'almost on a whim.'
At the time she has three very small children, 'I thought it would be a bit fun to do,' she smiles. 'And that's obviously worked out very well for me.'
She won the competition: 'It was broadcast on the Sunday in those days and on the Monday morning I had the editor of a national paper and a publisher on the phone.'
They offered her a series of articles and a book deal because she was trained as a journalist.
'With small children, it was difficult to work from home in those days. But I was able to do it and that was the wonderful thing so I just took the ball and ran with it.'
She published her 20th cookbook New Scottish Baking last summer and her first novel ten years ago. 'I'd been dabbling in it for about five years before that, so probably about 15 years ago the idea of writing fiction started.
'Initially they were terrible. I'm so glad they weren't published,'
Her latest novel, Whispers in The Glen, is inspired by her paternal family's roots in the Angus Glens.
Set in 1942, the storyline takes the reader into the lives of two sisters, Nell and Effie Anderson during the second world war.
Whispers in The Glen also flashes back to the sisters' adolescent years during WW1 and delves into a tale of sisterhood and secrets.
Sue borrowed names of family members for her characters, her father was Bob Anderson, her granny Nell and great aunt Effie.
Bob loved to walk and climb in the Glens with his older brother Michael, who was also a keen mountaineer.
'Even after we moved to Edinburgh, it was still very much where the family went.'
'And in fact, my uncle Michael's ashes are scattered on top of Dreish. He was 99 when he died.
'We all had a lovely ceremony there and things like that are very special to all of us.'
Readers who know the area will also spot familiar landmarks in the novel including The Glen Clova Hotel and the steep hike up to Loch Brandy.
While researching Glen Clova during the wartime era for Whispers In The Glen, Sue came across a story about the crash site of a WW2 plane written by The Courier's own Gayle Ritchie.
Sue thought: 'I wonder if I could bring this in. So I went up one day to see the crash site, just like Gayle did.
'It's definitely not an easy climb! But it's astonishing just being there and seeing it and I really wanted to bring that into the narrative.'
Another real-life inspiration for Whispers in The Glen is the remarkable story of Glens postie Jean Cameron.
Jean successfully campaigned for female postal workers to be allowed to wear trousers.
Postal rounds were taken on by local women while their fathers, husbands and sons were called up to the armed forces.
When Jean saw her uniform skirt, she pointed out that it wasn't practical for delivering mail in the Glens. She rode a bicycle to deliver letters and parcels and often had to climb over walls and even cross the River Esk as part of her round.
'So she said, 'I have to wear my own trousers, I just can't do it',' explains Sue. 'Because of her, all of the rural posties in Great Britain were issued uniform trousers that became known as Camerons.'
Whispers in The Glen will hit the bookshelves on June 5.
Sue is looking forward to a trip to Glen Clova on June 21, when she will be officially launching the book at Rottal Estate.
The author will be reading from her novel and taking questions from the audience about her work at Rottal Steading.
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