CLAIRE McGLASSON

CLAIRE McGLASSON

Claire grew up near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, with no idea that she lived just a few miles away from a secretive cult of women, or that their story would inspire her to write a novel one day.

As a child she was an avid reader and, fascinated by a school syllabus that included Margaret Atwood and Thomas Hardy, she went on to study English at the University of Leicester – where she lost herself in everything from the Anchoress’s Tale to Angela Carter.

She began her career writing for local newspapers and magazines then moved to ITV News where she has had a go at most jobs in the Anglia newsroom – producer, newsreader, weather presenter and correspondent.

Now back on the road with her TV camera in Cambridgeshire, she very often starts her day not knowing where it will take her, and has a matter of hours to research, shoot, script and edit a report for that evening’s programme. She gets to interview celebrities and politicians, and step behind-the-scenes at places that she’d never ordinarily get to go. But the biggest privilege is spending time with people at the very best, and very worst, times of their lives and helping them to tell their stories.

When she travelled to the Panacea Museum in Bedford in to film a feature called Hidden Histories she was hooked. Of all the stories she had ever covered, this was the one she kept returning to. Every time she interviewed an author she would tell them about the true story that was stranger than fiction: a group of ladies who had moved to Bedford in the 1920s, believing that their leader, Octavia, was the daughter of God. ‘Why don’t you write it?’ one suggested. And so she did - finding the freedom of fiction and lack of deadline to be liberating and terrifying in equal measure.

She now teaches Creative Writing at the Institute of Continuing Education at the University of Cambridge and offers private mentoring and editing services to emerging writers.