THE MEMORY PALACE

In the last of the Lady Tree Trilogy, which can also stand alone, Zeal Beester from The Lady Tree returns to centre stage in a sensuous romantic novel filled with thriller-like tension. Can Zeal survive single motherhood in repressive times? Now the mistress of a country estate, she finds herself unmarried and pregnant, with the father, John Nightingale, exiled to the Caribbean. A local Puritan zealot is as determined to make an example of her as he is to destroy all art and music in local churches. At the same time, Zeal must also deal with a heart-wrenching love triangle. The Memory Palace is full of surprises – an unexpected love story, a new hero and unlikely rescuer, the delicious details of building a great country house (the Memory Palace), theatrical astonishments and delightful stage machines. As Zeal battles to survive, the novel also paints a richly detailed picture of an English way of life that was about to be destroyed forever by the English Civil War. The novel also expresses the sheer joy that the arts can bring to our everyday daily lives.



AUTHOR'S NOTES

In this one, I nail my colours to the mast. As a former theatre director and choreographer, I believe passionately that the arts help keep us all sane. Not always great art either, though we will always need to delight in the wonders of great talent. But we also need to haul the arts out of glass museum cases and off professional stages into our daily lives. Singing, dancing, making music, making things – all change our state of mind (and possibly our health) for the better. In The Memory Palace, I show you a little of what I mean, with the help of the indomitable Zeal and the diffident, but stubbornly musical, estate parson, Dr. Bowler. I also sneak in a fair amount of fact about the religious extremism that closed London theatres and banned Christmas, because it had 'mass' in its name.
Visitors to Hardwick Hall will recognise the inspiration for Zeal's great walls of glass to let in the light. The real model ('Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall') caused almost as much gossip as Zeal's Memory Palace. 'All these windows,' says one character. 'They feel like eyes spying on us.' One of my models for Zeal was in fact Bess of Hardwick, with her rise in wealth and status through a series of marriages. The irony of The Memory Palace, is that Zeal doesn't seek or even want her rise.