Steven Neil
My first idea was to write a ‘Dick Francis’ style thriller based on my research into jockey Jem Mason, the winner of the first Liverpool ‘Grand National’ in 1839. As I researched further I found that he was linked to an actress called Harriet Howard, who ran away from home to live with him in London, when she was fifteen. Later she became mistress to Louis Napoleon and was reputed to have provided financial backing to him, in his aspiration to become Emperor Napoleon III of France. The challenge to understand how Harriet Howard, with no family wealth of her own, could conceivably have secured the money to fund such a campaign proved the spur to write a novel exploring the relationship between these three intriguing characters. The Merest Loss is the result. Historical fiction with a twist.
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