her story in The House at Riverton? Here is her reply:
"Daphne du Maurier's novels and those by the Bronte sisters are great favorites of mine.
I also love Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro,
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, and
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine, to name but a few. Not all of those are mysteries,
but they all take place in wonderful English country houses. I love stories in which the
house is more than a setting, becoming a character in its own right."
"In writing my own English country house mystery, I was keen to play with the conventions
of the genre a little. That's why I made Marcus a mystery writer and gave Grace a
penchant for mystery novels, in particular by Agatha Christie: the quintessential English
country house mystery novelist. It was a lot of fun to have Agatha Christie come to dinner
in my story."
"I was inspired also by English country house nonfiction: in particular, I went through
a great fascination with the Mitford sisters. Everything I read about the Mitford family
seemed brighter than fiction. I was especially interested in the depiction of a great a
aristocratic family on the verge of decline. Their genteel poverty was a revelation to
me and something I was very keen to incorporate into my story, and my depiction of
the house Riverton."
What kind of research does Kate Morton do for creating her story?
"...When I was researching The House at Riverton I read all sorts of books: social
cultural and persoal histories. My favorite types are autobiographies, memoirs and
biographies. The best of those breathe life into a forgotten time. Two such memoirs
are Frances Donaldson's Child of the Twenties and Beverley Nichol's The Sweet and
Twenties. Nichol's memoir brings to life the world of the 1920s society darlings and
literati; it is written retrospectively, giving additional insight into how someone who
had lived through the time might perceive it from decades later, after the horrors of the
Second World War."
"Personal letters are also excellent historical sources. One of my favoirte anthologies
contains the complete communication between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh --two
sparkling wits -- providing entertaining and vibrant eveidence of the way certain people
thought and spoke and behaved in the period....."
Note: Frances Donaldson's Child of the Twenties (published 1962) is available as a Kindle
book through Amazon for $3.99. Beverly Nichol's The Sweet and Twenties (published 1958),
is available as an interlibrary loan through Mel.org. The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn
Waugh (1986) are also available as an interlibrary loan thru Mel.org (Michigan eLibrary)
AND
May of 2016 Book Group discussed The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary Lovett.
What a fascinating family!!