Scala Radio Book Club: Lily: A Tale of Revenge by Dame Rose Tremain

In the Scala Radio Book Club this week (18th November), Mark chatted to English novelist Dame Rose Tremain on her brand-new novel Lily: A Tale of Revenge.

A pitch-perfect evocation of nineteenth-century London, Tremain's beautifully wrought novel follows the fortunes of a foundling child and the dreadful secret that she carries within her heart.

Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer...

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital.

Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret...

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?

Mark was interested to know more about the London Foundling Hospital which was the setting for the book. ‘Thomas Corum’s Foundling Hospital, which is at the centre of this novel, it actually existed. What do we know about the conditions there at the time?’

‘The system they followed was very cruel,’ said Rose. ‘They would send babies away very quickly and rename them. The name that my character gets is Lily. They then send them away for the first five or six years of their life to foster parents, usually in some rural situation in England. And of course, what happens in those years is the child gets very fond of the foster parents. And then it's a terrible second trauma to be taken away from them and brought back to the current hospital where they're trained in useful trades. It just struck me as a sort of prison.’

Mark asked, ‘You’ve won plenty of awards over the years. How important was the Damehood?’

‘Well, the Damehood, I heard about at a very interesting moment. I had cancer in 2019 and I was on my way to hospital. I have to say that I've fantastically enjoyed going to the palace. They let me take not just my partner and my daughter and son in law, they let me take my grandchildren along as well, which was just wonderful.’

Mark finished the interview asking, ‘It seems to me that you are writing at a point in literary history, when historical fiction seems to have risen to sit at the very top table, how much does that surprise you?’

‘I think critics are slightly schizophrenic about whether they like it or not. I would like to move away from it in the next thing that I do. But of course, the modern world is like a mind zone. There are so many things that you can't say, so many places you can't go, so I'm not quite sure where that leaves a writer like me. So I'm thinking very hard about all that and where it takes me next.’