Kate Mosse’s new book is a love-song to West Sussex, part of a series designed to bring out its authors’ personal connections to a home landscape. It began last year, with Michael Morpurgo welcoming spring in Devon, where he has lived – at the farm that inspired War Horse – for over 50 years; and then Val McDermid celebrating winter in Scotland, where she grew up and still lives. Bernardine Evaristo will explore summer soon – but, meanwhile, we have Mosse, also deeply and endearingly rooted in her chosen patch.
Mosse grew up in the village of Fishbourne. She now lives in Chichester, where she got to know her husband when they revised for A-levels in the shadow of the Bishop’s Palace, and held hands when she turned 17 on the day of the city’s annual Sloe Fair. Twenty-three years later, they celebrated her 40th there, with their children. Today, they live with his 90-something mother Granny Rosie – also “Sussex to her bones” – who remembers watching cattle herded in fields where a supermarket now stands.
