RHYS REVISITS HER RESEARCH

RHYS BOWEN:  I'm currently in Arizona where it is unusually cold (yes, I know you East Coaster will laugh when I tell you it's in the fifties and we had a frost warning this week). I showed you the picture of our house yesterday and those incredibly high ceilings mean it's hard to heat. This was not a consideration that popped into my mind when I first saw the house and thought how amazing that high ceiling was.

Luckily I am in pre-launch status for ABOVE THE BAY OF ANGELS, doing about an interview a day and talking about my experiences in Nice. So I have to keep checking the photos I took the last time I was there to remind myself what it was like. And I thought I'd share a few today to warm us all up. That coastline is one of the most stunning on Earth.

 When you drive from Nice to Monte Carlo one vista opens up after another. (taken from a speeding bus so a little wobbly)

Luxury yachts sparkle on blue water. This is in St. Jean Cap Ferat, which was close to our apartment and one of our favorite places to go for lunch. (It was also featured in my book as King Leopold of the Belgians built a villa there for his young mistress, and very savvily also bought up most of the land. Today an apartment there sells for millions.


This was the view from where we rented an apartment to do my research. It's in Villefranche-sur-Mer. (so called because the town helped keep the area free from pirates long ago and thus acquired a tax-free status)

And this is where I spent a lot of my time, up in Cimiez, where Queen Victoria stayed and most of the buildings date from her time there. This is from the Roman Amphitheater that actually plays a small part in my story.

This is a man-made waterfall, part of the city's original water supply, that was one of Queen Victoria's favorite outings. The bus ride up to it is hair-raising as it zig zags up the hillside extremely fast. But the view from it is worth the danger!

Lastly here I am, slaving away for my craft. (one does need a little time away from libraries, antiquarian bookshops and Queen Victoria's haunts. (yes, those are oysters)

Aren't we lucky to have these brilliant photographs that can take us back to places we've loved. I see the tiny black and whites of my childhood and they don't evoke memories in the same way. What is the best place where you've ever done research?

The Making of a Story: Rhys reveals the truth behind Above the Bay of Angels.

RHYS BOWEN: I exactly one week today my new book, ABOVE THE BAY OF ANGELS, will be published. It's set in the city of Nice on the French Riviera and it is a story about Queen Victoria and a young woman who cooks for her.

So how did I get involved with Queen Victoria. My usual focus is on the first half of the Twentieth Century, especially the two great wars. I had no intention of going further back in time and no particular interest in Queen Victoria. So this story came about entirely by lucky accident.

I was in Nice a few years ago and visiting Roman remains up on a hillside above the town. We saw this beautiful big white building stretching across the hillside. It had the words Excelsior Regina on it. A gardener was working in the garden and I asked him if it was a hotel.
"No Madame," he said. It was now apartments but it used to be a hotel because it was "built for your queen."
"For Queen Elizabeth?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No madame. For Queen Victoria."

That was the first time I learned that Queen Victoria had visited the South of France. So I started delving into this and discovered that she had spent her winters there during the latter years of her life. So a clever businessman had built this hotel for her, hoping to lure the rich and famous from the rest of Europe to Nice as a winter destination. Victoria came on a private train with her bedroom furniture, her maids, footmen, cooks, ladies and gentlemen... oh, and a regiment of Highland Pipers, and then said, 'I don't want anybody to know I'm the queen."

Don't you think the private train, retinue of 100 and the pipers were a bit of a give-away?

Then she said, "I want to be known as simple Lady Balmoral while I'm here." Yes, right.
I found all this fascinating. The more I dug, the more I realized I had the makings of a good story. In 1897 there was scandal as she insisted on bringing her Indian servant, Abdul Karim with her. Her gentlemen realized he was a dangerous man who was privy to too much sensitive information and passing it along to the head of the Muslim League in India. In spite of their threats she still brought him with her and there were discussions on how to get rid of him! Also her son, the Prince of Wales, thought she'd gone senile and was trying to come up with a way to remove her from the throne.
So plenty of intrigue to write about.
Then I thought: she's coming to a new hotel with French chefs AND she brings her own cooks. How stupid is that? And I went one stage further: what if one of her cooks was a young woman with a terrible secret and becomes involved in a murder plot? And so Above the Bay of Angels was born!

I came back to Nice and started research in detail. I found a helpful librarian and the main library who dug out amazing stuff including the plans and brochure when the hotel was first build and who stayed on which floor.  Then I really hit pay-dirt. In a small bookstore in Antibes I found a locally published volume on Queen Victoria in Nice. It listed who accompanied her, who she visited, who came to stay, where she went on excursions etc etc. Perfect.

So we have a young woman with a secret
Queen Victoria
The French Riviera
French cuisine
A whiff of royal scandal
A hint of danger
Would you say that's a perfect recipe for a book?

So a lot of what you will read in this book is true historical fact. And I'm interested to know: do you like to learn real history from historical novels? Does it upset you if the writer gets something wrong?