Present In The Past

Historical drama author Kate Furnivall refuses to let bygones be bygones

- Bruce Dennill

The blurb at the top of author Kate Furnivall’s website informs visitors that her books involve sweeping romance, sumptuous settings and unforgettable adventure. That is a gloriously unsubtle, populist approach, at odds with the usual niche approach where publishers seem to prefer a snobbish intellectual angle in an attempt to convince readers of the value of their output.

How does Furnivall’s own perspective fit into that space?

“All of those descriptions fall into the greater sweep of human relations,” she says. “There is the desire to overcome adversity and the constant inspiration that comes with that. That’s why I always like to put characters in times of crisis, where the socio-cultural structure is falling apart – times of war or nations finding their identity, usually. When people are stripped of everything, you find out what they’re really about. That’s my goal – peel back the layers and drop all the civilised facades. It’s then that I discover what they’re about, and in that moment, what I’m about.

“It’s always about the healing power of love,” she continues. “They’re not love stories, necessarily. They must be historical, revealing what readers may not know about the period. My new book Betrayal is set in Europe in 1938, and all people tend to think about that time is Germany ahead of World War Two. Nobody knows what was going on in France or in Spain – a civil war! – at the time. It’s that whole epic view. I remember when I was 10 or 11, our last period at school was art. We’d all be tired and struggling to concentrate, so our teacher would read us excerpts from Les Miserables. We were far too young for that, but some of it must’ve stuck.”

Owning a perspective