The Northerner

I was delighted to read a very generous blog post in The Guardian yesterday about The Hanging Wood. Here's a link to David Ward's piece

As David Ward says, the Theatre by the Lake features more prominently in the synopsis for the next instalment of the Lake District Mysteries than in The Hanging Wood. It's an excellent place, and deserves every support.

A View of the Lake

After my tour of the Theatre by the Lake on Wednesday, I had a look round Keswick to fasten in my mind some of the settings that play a part in my current Lake District Mystery work-in-progress. These included the River Greta, which flows beside Fitz Park in a part of the town that I haven’t explored properly in the past.

After that, it was back to Windermere, and a walk up a fairly gentle slope to Orrest Head. This is the viewpoint from which Alfred Wainwright, famed for his walking guides to the Lakes, first fell in love with the area. And it’s easy to understand why that grumpy old man (as he seemed to many) was stirred to such emotion. It is a truly beautiful part of the world. After glimpsing Windermere through the trees on the way up, you have a terrific panorama.

I’m not – at present – planning a scene set at Orrest Head, but the magic of the setting certainly fires the imagination, and provides a dramatic reminder of why the Lakes exert such a magnetic appeal on so many people from around the world. In the Lake District Mysteries, I strive to avoid anything approaching a travelogue, but I am keen to try to capture something of the atmosphere of a beautiful part of the country. And the climb up Orrest Head provided me with fresh writing inspiration.

The Theatre by the Lake

A highlight of my trip to the Lake District was a backstage tour of a truly fascinating place, the Theatre by the Lake at Keswick. There can be few theatres anywhere in the world that enjoy a lovelier setting, overlooking Derwent Water, and the building – opened eleven years ago - has been very sympathetically integrated into the landscape.

One of the many pleasant things that has happened to me as a result of writing this blog is that, after I mentioned the Theatre following my last visit to Keswick, in the autumn, I got into contact with David Ward, literary consultant to the Theatre, and a Cheshire based former journalist. David has written a history of the Theatre which I found really interesting. It’s a story of a collective and community effort to create something truly worthwhile, in the face of many obstacles. It’s great that the story had a happy ending. Audiences and reviews have been exceptional, consistently. I would love to watch a production there, and when time permits, I plan to do so.

I am interested in featuring the Theatre in either my current work in progress or a future book, or perhaps both. It’s such an intriguing place, and one whose existence deserves to be very widely known. I’ve been encouraged by David’s reaction to the suggestion, and he was kind enough to arrange for a colleague, Rachel Swift, to organise an enthralling tour. Over the years, I've been lucky enough to look behind the scenes at many remarkable places, including Wembley, Harrods, Chester Zoo and Liverpool's Conservation Centre, and this was another memorable outing

Because the Theatre is such a modern place, it’s not at all like something out of Phantom of the Opera. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of the props room (which among many other artefacts boasted a fake skeleton) was compelling. Could it be a scene for an incident in a mystery novel? Very possibly....