Barbara Mutch was in studio with Sue Grant-Marshall for her Reading Matters show on Radio Today to discuss The Housemaid’s Daughter. Mutch said that it took her six years to research and write the book and that she’s been writing for sixteen or seventeen years, which she only started once her family moved out of South Africa. When they were moved to the UK on transfer she said she found herself not writing about their new life over there but about what she had left behind: “I was homesick and writing about it was a way to bring me home”.

Mutch’s grandparents came to South Africa from Ireland in about 1900 and settled near Cradock, but as they weren’t married her grandfather had to come first and after an acceptable period of engagement her grandmother joined him five years later. This, Mutch says, is where the fictional part of her book starts.

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Book details

• The Housemaid’s Daughter by Barbara Mutch
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  EAN: 9780755392100
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