CLAIRE McGLASSON
I grew up near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, with no idea that I lived just a few miles away from a secretive cult of women, or that their story would inspire me to write a novel one day.
As a child, I was an avid reader and, fascinated by a school syllabus that included Margaret Atwood and Thomas Hardy, I went on to complete an English degree – where I lost myself in everything from the Anchoress’s Tale to Angela Carter.
I began my career writing for local newspapers and magazines then moved to ITV News where I’ve had a go at most jobs in the Anglia newsroom – producer, newsreader, weather presenter and correspondent.
Now back on the road with my TV camera in Cambridgeshire, I very often starts my day not knowing where it will take me, and have a matter of hours to research, shoot, script and edit a report for that evening’s programme. I get to interview celebrities and politicians, and step behind-the-scenes at places I’d never ordinarily get to go. But the biggest privilege is spending time with people at the very best, and very worst, times of their lives and helping them to tell their stories.
When I travelled to the Panacea Museum in Bedford in to film a feature called Hidden Histories, I was hooked. Of all the stories I’d ever covered, this was the one she kept returning to. Every time I interviewed an author she would tell them about the true story that was stranger than fiction: a group of ladies who had moved to Bedford in the 1920s, believing that their leader, Octavia, was the daughter of God. ‘Why don’t you write it?’ one suggested. And so I did - finding the freedom of fiction and lack of deadline to be liberating and terrifying in equal measure.
My second novel, The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, was based on another eccentric chapter of British history.
I was course director of the undergraduate programme of Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge and offer private mentoring and editing services to emerging writers.
In the chapel at the Panacea Museum, Bedford