Daughter of Cornwall

It’s taken almost 35 years, But Fern Britton has finally fulfilled her dream of living back in Cornwall, she chats to Carol Burns about her new book – and a new chapter in her life

- Carol Burns

A read of TV presenter and best-selling author Fern Britton’s CV will leave you breathless. There’s a stint in theatre management, more than a decade in a newsroom, followed by many, many programmes encompassing a 30-year TV career that includes a stint on Strictly and the hit stage production of Calendar Girls.

Her latest novel Daughters of Cornwall traverses more than a century of Cornish history – revolving around her own family’s history, discovered by chance and still remaining partly shrouded in mystery. “It’s about 70 per cent truth and the rest of it is fiction,” she says of the book first inspired by a letter written to her 40 years ago.

“When I first came down to work for Westward Television in 1980 I had a letter from a man who had been on holiday down her and he wrote to me saying I wonder if you are related to Ruth Britton (my mother) and Tony Britton (my father) because I think I know her.”

An exchange of letters followed and it soon became evident that he was her mother’s brother. “He sent me photographs of him and my grandmother on a beach when he was a toddler and he had letters in her handwriting to his new foster mother because she had to arrange a private fostering.