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Writer's pictureAllen & Unwin

Q&A with Helen Simonson

We chat with Helen Simonson about her book The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club.

Q&A with Helen Simonson

Join us as we chat with bestselling author Helen Simonson about her latest novel The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club.


Set in 1919, the story follows Constance Haverhill, who faces uncertainty after the war. Sent to be a companion to a friend in Hazelbourne-on-Sea, Constance meets Poppy Wirrall, a spirited woman who defies convention by running a ladies' motorcycle club. As the country celebrates peace, the women confront the reality that their hard-won freedoms are fading.


 

A&U: Welcome Helen. We’re excited to hear more about The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club!  Can you elaborate on the research you did for the book?


HS: My research was ongoing throughout the four years of writing this book. Historical research was made extra difficult by the pandemic lockdown. Thank goodness for the internet and online book ordering. And I had lots of books, and material left over from my second novel, The Summer Before the War, which took place in 1914.


I began this novel in 2019, the 100-year anniversary of the official Peace following signing of the World War One Treaty of Versailles. But the story started to really come together in 2020. I had already written about World War One, but the Covid pandemic highlighted that my previous book had skipped over the Spanish flu entirely – as most of history seemed to have done. The parallels were eerie and deepened the struggles of my characters. My mother survived Covid – alone in rural France – so you can imagine from where I drew the strength of my women characters.  I still have English family near Rye, East Sussex which is a 14th Century town on a hill. It is close to Hastings and Eastbourne and Bexhill, all grand old seaside towns. I usually visit at least once a year and in 2021 the Bexhill Museum was a particularly helpful resource. Fun fact: I also interviewed a pilot from Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, NY to learn how to fly a Sopwith Camel.

 

A&U: Do any of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why? 


HS: Tilly Mulford is special to me. She is a mechanical and logistics whizz – and a librarian! But though she is close friends with the rest of the club, especially Poppy Wirrall, it is painfully obvious that she is not quite on the same social level. Even Constance Haverhill is (on her mother’s side) from a more educated and affluent background. Tillie is the real working woman. To me she also represents all the early female engineers who struggled to be recognized and were kept out of work, and not allowed to join professional societies in this era. Her name is an homage to Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling, an engineer who almost was not allowed her career – which would have been a shame as she saved the British Spitfire program in World War Two.

 

A&U: If you had to describe Poppy Wirrall in three words, what would those three words be? 


HS: Blithe, generous, sometimes a bit oblivious. I didn’t realize, until I read the novel through, that Poppy occasionally behaves like Jane Austen’s Emma!

 

A&U: Can you give us some insight into what makes the main protagonist, Constance Haverhill, tick? 


HS: Constance’s parents made a love match across social classes. Her mother was educated, from a prominent ecclesiastical family and bosom friends with Lady Mercer. Her father, though wealthy enough to own his own farm, was not gentry. This places Constance on an interesting social knife edge. She is too intelligent to be content as a poor relation or to marry for convenience. But she is yet to understand what it really means to be a working woman.  A teetering future in a world reeling from change. This is catnip to the writer!

 

A&U: What was the highlight of writing The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club?


HS: I lost my Dad to Covid in March 2020. He was a lifelong aviation enthusiast and loved Sopwith Camels (as well as Tiger Moths and Spitfires). All the aeroplanes in the book are for him and I was inspired to write a story he would love. At Rhinebeck Aerodrome, I overcame my fears and – thinking of my father – I flew in a 1927 open biplane to understand open cockpit flying. Writing about flying, and feeling close to my father, was the heart of my experience writing this novel.

 

A&U: What do you hope your readers take away from The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club


HS: I hope people take away the spark of love, the bedrock of family and friendship, and the vital importance of being resilient and true to yourself.

 

A&U:  Finally, what would you say is your most interesting writing quirk? 


HS: I have spent years trying to get up at dawn and put in my hours at the computer. Only to procrastinate and fail, and miss weeks at a time, which I blamed on life in general. But with this book I discovered a fascinating quirk about myself. I think I’m an afternoon writer! Instead of failing to get to my desk by noon and blowing off the whole day, I began to give myself permission to start at two o’clock in the afternoon. Or even three o’clock.  And I found steady employment ensued.  Who knew the dawn hours are - along with wet handkerchiefs across the forehead and visits from the toga-clad muse – only tropes of writing and not necessities.

 


 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

by Helen Simonson


A young woman's life is forever changed in the summer after World War I when she befriends a group of independent, motorcycle-riding women in a seaside town on the English coast.



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