Val McDermid at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival
Listen online: Crime novelist Val McDermid on her journey from Fife to Oxford, tabloid journalism and finally acclaim as one of Britain's best sellers.
Val McDermid grew up in Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland. At 17 she went up to St Hilda's College, Oxford, one of the youngest undergraduates they'd ever taken on, and the first from a Scottish state school.
She became a journalist, first in the West Country and then for the Sunday People in Manchester - all the while spending her spare time pounding out fiction in the hope of getting a publisher to bite.
In this programme, she is in conversation with the Yorkshire Post's Digital Editor, David Behrens.
More from the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival
..........................
HOW TO LISTEN
Use the links to the right to:
- Play the programme now
- Download it to your iPod or MP3 player
- Subscribe to receive all our podcasts automatically, as soon as they're available
..........................
Val McDermid's next book is Trick of the Dark (Little, Brown), set in the colleges of the Oxford in which she once studied. She says: "It was fun to delve back into my past to conjure up images of life in an Oxford college. I should stress that my own experiences as an undergraduate at St Hilda's College did not include murder except in the form of the detective novels that all my tutors seemed to devour. But this novel definitely involved a trip down memory lane for me."
.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Exclusive: Grayson takes lower deal from Leeds to make quick return with Huddersfield - Have your say
- Toddler ‘killed by poison used for his mum’s cannabis’
- Video: Scargill wins £13,000 damages after NUM ‘tried to disown him’
- Boy of 7 accused of racism for asking classmate why he is brown
- Court told welfare fears for pupils led to sacking
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Thursday 23 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: West
