Chichester novelist Kate Mosse celebrates 20 years of Labyrinth

SussexWorld

Chichester novelist Kate Mosse is heading out on a 34-date theatre tour including Worthing and Portsmouth to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the book that changed her life.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely

00:07to speak to Kate Morse. Now, this is astonishing. Somehow, somehow, it's 20 years since the

00:13publication of Labyrinth and it's a book that changed everything for you, but those 20 years,

00:18astonishing, isn't it?

00:20It's amazing. It feels, on the one hand, it feels just like yesterday. And on the other

00:25it feels like it's a completely different lifetime. Because when you write a novel,

00:30something like Labyrinth, you know, we bought a house in Caucason in the southwest of France in

00:341989. I didn't intend to write about it. And then little by little, what I call the whispering in

00:39the landscape started. The idea that the voices from the past were speaking to me and here was

00:45a story that I could tell. And little by little, the story of three books, two women, one grail,

00:53a version of the grail story. One woman, you know, 1209, living in Caucason on the eve of the wars

01:00of religion that will destroy the South. Another is an English woman called Alice Tanner, who's

01:07come from, you know, the south of England, this part of the world, who is there because she's

01:12been left a legacy. And little by little, those two stories are coming together. So it's a

01:17time-slip story. It's set in 2005 and 1209 to 1244. And it took me years and years to write,

01:24you know, years of researching, years of preparing. And then finally, unbelievably,

01:29the novel published in 2005. And now here we are 20 years later. And it changed everything.

01:36And the point is, you caught something, didn't you? You caught something in the air.

01:43It just so happened to be the book that captured readers' imagination.

01:48Can you explain that?

01:50No, not really. You know, it's, you know, you never really know. The author is the last to

01:54know. I mean, I think there are a mixture of things that came after Dan Brown's The Da Vinci

01:58Code. And I think people were really interested in grail stories. When it came out in paperback,

02:03it was on the Richard and Judy show on the television. And that was enormously important.

02:07And it was also at a time when people were discovering the southwest of France,

02:11Carcassonne, Toulouse, Languedoc region. Wonderful wines for those of you who drink wine.

02:16So I think it was just the stars aligned for me. I was very, very, very lucky.

02:21And it was just joyous going all over the world. It was translated into 38 different languages,

02:29going to talk to readers in Japan, in Germany, in Canada, in Finland, France, obviously,

02:36all over the world. And one of the reasons that I'm now going on tour,

02:40we have a special new edition, a 20th anniversary edition of Labyrinth. And there's a new

02:45introduction by the wonderful Ian Rankin, who is an old mate and was very happy to write the

02:51introduction for the book. And also I'm doing a theatre tour, one woman show that will be,

02:57if you imagine, Phil, it's like going to be a mixture of Madonna meets Simon Callow doing

03:01Dickens. You know, so it's going to be special. I'm not going to be wearing a pointy bra.

03:06I never had you down as being inspired by Madonna.

03:09Well, no, no, but it's more that there will be special effects. There'll be lights,

03:13there'll be video, there'll be film, amazing music. And from the second people set foot

03:19into the theatre, they will feel that they've been transported to medieval France. I'm going

03:24to be telling the story behind the writing of the novel, but also I'm going to be telling the real

03:29story behind the history that underpins it. So Nazi grail hunters, grail legends,

03:35labyrinths, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, all of that story of medieval France,

03:40the wars of religions that are so extraordinary and so brutal, really.

03:45So I can't wait to be back on stage.

03:47Absolutely. But with that distance in time, 20 years, is it a book that you can go back

03:51to and read objectively as a reader? Can you enjoy it in that way yourself?

03:55Well, do you know, actually, Phil, the thing that was really

03:58interesting was that I only reread it last weekend.

04:05Really?

04:06Yeah, because...

04:07And what did you think?

04:08I was so nervous that I was going to read it and I was going to go, oh, my, that is just awful.

04:14This is such a bad book. And actually, I was really, I was relieved. I really enjoyed it.

04:21And I thought, and it brought it all back, all the feelings about it. So many things have

04:26happened in my life in the past 20 years. Not least of all, there is a scene in the early part

04:31of the book between the lead character of the medieval period and her father when her father

04:35is dying. Since then, I have lost my own father. Since then, I've lost my own mother. I have

04:40lost many close friends. I was writing about things that I hadn't yet experienced.

04:44And so when I went back into the book, there was a part of me that thought, oh, my word,

04:49this is like a foreshadowing of stuff that was to come. And of course, now, as you and I have

04:55talked about before, I'm now a grandparent. And it does feel, that's why it felt rather

05:00wonderful rereading the book, because I could see how much I had changed. But the novel itself.

05:07Yeah, I thought, OK, I can't wait to get back on stage. And the whole point of the tour is to say

05:13thank you to readers and to audiences for taking the book to their hearts. And I just want to

05:18celebrate with the people who made it possible for me to be a full time writer, because that's

05:23what Labyrinth did for me. Fantastic. Well, I still can't believe it's 20 years.

05:28We've miscalculated somehow. But congratulations on the success and even better sustaining that

05:34success ever since. Always lovely to speak to you and have a fabulous time on tour. Thank you.

05:40Thanks, Bill.

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