Author Manda Scott talks home, family, roots and her new novel…
Manda Scott is an author and podcaster. She was born and educated in Glasgow and worked as a vet in Cambridge and Newmarket before becoming a writer. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Edgar Award and the Saltire Award. She is best known for her Sunday Times bestselling historical thriller series Boudica. She lives on an organic smallholding in Shropshire with her wife, Faith Tilleray, with whom she runs the podcast Accidental Gods. Her new novel, Any Human Power, is published by September Publishing.
ON HOME I was born and brought up in Scotland in a tiny village called Eaglesham. We spent a lot of time on [the isle of] Skye, so my heart is in the West Highlands. I went to Cambridge at 21 and was a vet in Newmarket. My home is an organic smallholding on the edge of a hill in Shropshire. So home is Scotland, and home is Shropshire, but there’s still a bit of me that’s Cambridge and Newmarket. My wife and I have been together twelve years.
ON FAMILY You grow up and you think your family is normal but then you start doing therapy and realise there is no normal, normality is a fantasy that we all create. My family was significantly more abnormal than usual. Looking back, both my parents were a long way along different spectrums. Our home was a wildlife rehab centre for birds of prey. There was a very, very big box in the kitchen and at dawn and dusk we swapped the kestrels for the tawny owls. I ended up being a vet, oddly enough! There was a degree of dysfunction, but I have enormous gratitude because I lived in this little village where difference was not greatly appreciated but my mum didn’t care about that. That was a really good model. It taught me that it was okay to be different.
ON ROOTS My dad’s family were farmers and my mum’s family were from the north of England. When we did the ancestry thing it was 100 per cent Scottish and Northern English except for twelve per cent Viking, which goes back to 1266. My parents are both dead and my brother is in Sheffield, so I don’t have any family left in Scotland.
ON MY DESK There’s a lot of podcasting material and, as I do shamanic teaching online, a chime that starts and ends the meditations. I have a piece of wrought iron with the imprint of a fossil on it and a yin-yang bean. When I need peace and calm this reminds me that there is balance in the world.
ON WRITING Nobody told me that writing a book was hard! One of the writing magazines had a competition for a “feisty feminine sleuth” and I thought, I can do that! I was shortlisted for the prize and I got an agent who said they could sell the book. The only person at that point who was writing lesbian fiction that wasn’t about discovering your sexuality was Val McDermid. Nobody wanted to publish it except the Women’s Press until it got shortlisted for the Orange Prize and then suddenly it was okay.
ON SUCCESS To be able to fund yourself by writing is a privilege. If you asked 30-year-old me would I be happy to be shortlisted for a few major prizes and to be able to fund my own smallholding through my writing by the age of 60, the answer would be yes. But now my idea of success is how do we manage total systemic change in time to not see the loss of 97 per cent of living things on the earth? Success in the old paradigm is very different to success in the new paradigm. We have to find our common humanity and our connection with each other and the values we all hold common and build something that allows people and planet to flourish. That’s a much bigger ask than, can I be shortlisted for the Orange Prize, please?
ON BOOKSHOPS When I was a kid there was John Smith’s in Glasgow which was heaven. Castle Books in Ludlow, and Booka Books are both lovely because they are run by people who love the amazing magic of printing on paper.
