Kate Griffin writes for Female First on the release of Kitty Peck and the Parliament of Shadows, the fourth book in her Kitty Peck series.
Kitty Peck and the Parliament of Shadows
I am a failed actor
Writing is a way for me to fulfil my long-held dream of performing. All the characters, all the voices in my books – that’s me showing off! In my early 20s I shared the stage twice with Paul Bettany, once as Hermia to his Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the glorious, cliff-top Minack Theatre in Cornwall, and once as Cecily to his Algernon in The Importance of being Earnest in a large garden shed in Rickmansworth. Paul, obviously, went on to be a Hollywood A-lister.
I am really tiny
Not just a bit on the short side, I mean really tiny. I’m not quite five foot tall. Smallness runs on both sides of the family, apparently, so I never stood a chance of being a supermodel. My mum’s mother, Hannah, was minute and my dad’s grandmother, Bella, was equally little. According to dad, Bella was “utterly terrifying”. I like to think I’ve channelled the spirit of Bella into the ferocious character of Lady Ginger – a Victorian, opium-addicted crime baroness. She’s tiny and frail, but the world turns on the blink her jet-black eyes. I think it’s worth adding, for comic effect, that Paul Bettany is over six foot.
I am a true born cockney
It’s a mistake to think that anyone born in the East End of London is a cockney. This is simply not true. Confusingly, to be a genuine cockney you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells – the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church in Cheapside, not St Mary & Holy Trinity at Bow. I was born in the maternity unit of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, easily within earshot of the ‘great bell of Bow’. These days, it’s quite hard to be a true born cockney. Barts no longer has a maternity unit in the City and the sound of Bow’s bells has become muffled by pollution.
I could have claimed a dowry from the City of London
It’s a source of great regret that I never applied for a dowry from the City of London. As a girl born with the Square Mile, I could have benefitted from a dowry fund dating from the 19th century. Pasquale Favale was an Italian who fell in love with a girl from the City. They married and were very happy. In 1882 he bequeathed 18,000 lira to the City and stipulated that each year a portion of the money was to be given to a “poor, honest, young woman, native of London, who has recently been, or are about to be married”. In 1994 I was that woman. Irritatingly, I knew about the Favale bequest but forgot to stake my claim. This rather arcane, but charming, token bequest continues, although today it is increasingly difficult to find people born within the City.
I know quite a lot about Chinese porcelain
My first job after university was as assistant to an antique dealer who specialised in Oriental porcelain. My employer’s shop was small, rather cramped and crammed with valuable objects. One my main duties was dusting the precious things. I am incredibly clumsy. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I am mildly dyspraxic, so this was probably not my perfect job. In the two years I spent in that shop off Bond Street, I learned a great deal about Chinese porcelain, (to this day I can accurately identify pieces from the Han, Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties). I also learned a lot about invisible mending with superglue.
I love Hammer films
The late 1970s was the golden age of babysitting. As a teenager there was nothing better than being asked to mind the children of my parents’ friends for an evening as it meant I could watch these glorious, campy, gothic films without fear of interruption. Reader, I fell in love with them. Hammer films are breathtakingly beautiful – and become more so with age. Created on a shoestring budget at Bray studios near Windsor, the costumes, sets, lighting and atmosphere are astonishing. I’m not ashamed to say that I believe the look of Hammer – the gorgeous heaving velvet darkness - fills the imagined world of my books.
I sat on one of Jane Asher’s cakes
There was a time, before Bake Off, when actor Jane Asher was the go-to celebrity when it came to cakes. No respectable party in London was complete without a signature bake crafted by the woman who had played Francesca the peasant girl in my favourite Roger Corman film, The Masque of the Red Death. At some point in the late 1990s, my friend, the features editor of a well-known woman’s glossy magazine, was invited to the launch of a luxury accessories store. She took me with her. It was a hot day and the heaving shop was dripping like a sauna. We took our complimentary glasses of cava downstairs where it was cooler and I perched on a low shelf. When I stood up, my friend noticed two mysterious red patches on my skirt. Unfortunately, this turned out to be icing from the replica handbag cake I’d been resting against for the last half hour. Even worse were the buttock-shaped indentations that now disfigured Jane’s facsimile Hermes Birkin. As we made our way furtively upstairs and headed for door, I heard the ominous words, ‘And now, our guest Jane has a very special surprise…’