Whenever I have a problem in writing, I think back to that book, which made every demand on me that a writer of fiction can encounter. Times had changed, and it went on to win a big prize. I had written four other novels before my French Revolution story was published in 1992, as A Place of Greater Safety. My manuscript went out into a world where, to many publishers, ‘historical fiction’ only meant ‘historical romance’. I set out tell some of them in a huge novel that took five years to research and write. But most of the novels I came across were about the royals and nobles while I thought the revolutionaries had the best stories. I was fascinated by the era, and always keen to find convincing, immersive historical fiction. I began it soon after I finished university, and wrote it because it didn’t exist and I wanted to read it. Hilary Mantel’s Inside Story: “The first novel I wrote was a historical novel, but set in a very different time and place-Paris during the Revolution.
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