Sussex author promises perfect antidote to Covid blues

Richard, who boarded at Eastbourne College and farmed for 42 years at Laughton, near Lewes, has recently retired with his wife to Tenterden just across the Sussex border in Kent.

But his novels are all Sussex based – and this latest will be a boost for everyone just now, he hopes.

“There are times when laughter really helps, and this I’m sure is one of them.

“I’ve launched the book with that in mind.”

The book is the final playful episode in Richard’s quintet of Sussex-based stories and a sequel to his Chalkhill Blue.

The latest novel is set in a provincial theatre in the 1960s, in Eastbourne – and amongst other inventive comic situations features a preposterously funny cricket match in the grounds of an estate called Hadderton, based on Firle Place, he says.

“After years of working on an epic story like my previous novel, The White Cross, I thought that something lighter would be fun to write.

“But as one terminally ill actor is meant to have declared ‘Dying is easy – but comedy, that’s really tricky.’

“So it’s a relief to hear that people find this book so funny.”

As a teenager himself, Richard spent an exciting year in repertory, at Richmond in Surrey and on tour in Yorkshire: a life-changing experience which formed the basis for this latest Sussex story, with the Richmond Theatre transported to the Meads village in Eastbourne.

Early in his career Richard was advised by his elderly cousin, the celebrated writer John Masefield, never to imagine an idea, a turn of phrase would stay in mind until he was ready to record it seated at his desk.

“Always carry paper with you and a pencil,” cousin John insisted, “to jot down thoughts whenever and wherever they occur.”

“Which is very much what I did for my first published novel,” Richard says.

“There’s nothing like a steady manual occupation for stimulating the imagination, and by then running my own dairy farm near Lewes, I found the two hours night and morning which it took to do the milking were some of my best times for inspiration.

“I still have the scraps of the paper towelling which I used to wipe cows’ udders, scrawled across with lines of dialogue and seasonal descriptions for the draft script of Chalkhill Blue.

“That novel not only helped to save the farm when milk became unprofitable, but won me a literary award, sold an option for a TV mini-series, has so far appeared in eight editions and topped the Amazon bestsellers list!”

Three Seasons of Sadie is the most recent story in Richard’s series of historical novels – all of them adventures in their own right, between them spanning more than 800 years of Sussex history, following the fortunes of two local families based in the Sussex downlands, from medieval Lewes to the smuggling trade in Alfriston, through Regency Brighton and the cataclysm of the First World War, to the impact of the swinging sixties on a “yeasty verging on the beastly” teenager in his latest Sussex book.

http://richardmasefield.co.uk

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