This is a follow on from yesterdays post about The
The Broken Gate. The information here is all taken from
Video Google from an interview done for
Chatshow Network show six years ago. There do not seem to be any copyright restrictions as it was available for embedding, so with thanks to them I am sharing by reproducing here this video and interview.
Anita Burgh has led a very interesting life, she was born the daughter of a housemaid and is now a Lady, do watch this video to learn more or read the interview below. It explains so much about where her inspiration for her novels really comes from.
This video is entitled part one but there was no sign of a follow up being available.
The happiest years of Anita Burgh's childhood, were the years during the second world war which she spent at Lanhydrock, Cornwall, the estate of Viscount Clifden. Anita describes her life there as idyllic and says "Lanhydrock was the entire world to me, a magical, wonderful, beautiful world." It was also a house and family stuck in a time warp, that of Victorian England and would prove to be an immense source of inspiration when, much later in life, Anita began writing novels, many of which are set in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. When Anita, whose origins were then considered to be quite lowly, married her husband, a member of the English aristocracy, it caused an outcry. In fact she had no idea until they became engaged, and she was taken to meet the family, that her fiance was the future Lord Burgh. They had met on a houseboat, albeit in Cheyne Walk and lived on kippers, so she had assumed that he was a penniless student. However, it was visiting the family estate in Scotland and where Anita encountered class distinctions, that was to prove invaluable material, when Anita came to write her first book. After watching an interview with a Mills and Boon author who earned £250,000 a year, Anita decided that would be the answer to all their financial problems. She sat the family down and said we had better write a best seller - three hours later she was the only one left and her career as a novelist had begun, because as Anita says "It was such fun". Since then she has written twenty novels and her latest "The Broken Gate", is the first part of a trilogy, so there are at least two more in the pipeline! Anita has overcome many difficulties, including problems on both sides of the family when she married, her father accused her of being a traitor, whilst his family looked down their noses at her and then the subsequent breakdown of the marriage. She has also overcome dyslexia, which is no mean feat for a novelist. Anita is in the rare position of having experienced life from "both sides of the tracks". She grew up listening to her mother and grandmother's stories of life in service and then her own marriage into the world aristocracy; all of which Anita draws upon in her writing and which makes for fascinating reading. (Transcript from the video interview)
Now we know where and how Anita Burgh got her inspiration from for the twenty novels she has had published since she was fifty! What an interesting lady.
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Anita Burgh Courtesy of 
Sophie Hannah
Lori Lansens