In Conversation With Kate Mosse

The bestselling novelist talks to Fanny Blake about discovering Carcassonne and the inspiration for her latest novel, The Burning Chambers (Mantle)

- Fanny Blake

Kate divides her time between Chichester, where she lives with her husband, playwright Greg Mosse, her mother-in-law Rosie and a grumpy old West Highland Terrier, Mish, and Carcassonne, southwest France. Their children, Martha, 28, and Felix, 25, live in London and come home when they can.

I don’t remember wanting to be a writer when I was a child but my mum says that I was always writing things.

Apparently I wrote plays and made my friends make their own costumes but I’ve blocked all that out.

Growing up, I thought I was going to be a violinist.

I got a place at music school then realised in the nick of time that I wasn’t really good enough to be anything more than an orchestral player so I went to university to read English instead.

My first job was in publishing. However I started to write non-fiction then I turned to fiction.

I was very proud of finishing my first two novels but they’re not very good. I hadn’t yet found my voice. Then when I went to Carcassonne and fell in love with the voices of that medieval city and that part of France, I found the voice coming from within.

Greg and I went to school together but lost touch.