Hello and welcome to Stories of Scotland. In this episode we have a chat with Sue Lawrence about her new historical novel, The Green Lady. Set in the 16th century, it follows the lives of many women throughout this period

in Scotland. From Lillius Drummond, the Green Lady herself, first wife to Alexander Seton,

a Scottish Earl who was one of King James I and Sixth's most trusted aides, and his following wives,

Griselle Leslie and Margaret Hay. Their home is fivey castle, a huge castle that still stands today, but the book stretches much further afield,

as Alexander Seton's aunt is Marie Seton, Mary Queen of Scots' most loyal lady in waiting. The book casts a light on women in the 16th century and the ruthless nature of power and ambition, as well as my favourite ghosties. So, let's go back to the 16th century.

Hi Sue, thank you so much for joining us today to chat about your new book, The Green Lady.

Can you just introduce yourself a little bit and tell us what brought you to be writing Scottish historical fiction?

Yeah, I'm Sue Lawrence and I'm probably better known, or have been over the

years for my food writing. And I've done quite a lot of cookbooks now, about 19 or 20. And I just

decided about 10 years ago that because I love history and research so much, I wanted to start

writing, well, first of all, fiction.

And then when I was thinking fiction, I thought, could it be contemporary? And I thought,

no, I love the past so much and finding out about what actually happened. I decided just to

start down the historical novel route. All my novels apart from one, the last one, have got

a sort of dual narrative,

which means there's a contemporary strand as well as the old story,

because I just find it's a kind of interesting technique to use to impart, perhaps,

a little bit more information into the old story.

But this one is in the late 16th century and early 17th century and then the contemporary story is in the

1980s. This is the Green Lady and this is the one that I'm very excited about. Yes, and it's

fantastic. I spent the weekend reading it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Being pulled back into the 16th

century was wonderful. I think, yeah, especially with the line of

...