Happy Valley: How Sally Wainwright drama inspired former Met police officer to capture and tell real-life stories of Yorkshire policewomen

A new book by a former Metropolitan police officer aims to capture just that, sharing the stories of women from the region who have spent years on the beat.

“When we think of a police officer, we talk of someone very strong, very brave, able to defend themselves,” reflects The Real Happy Valley author Alice Vinten. “Actually what these women also had was compassion and kindness.

"Every single one I spoke to was compassionate about the people they were dealing with - that was a quality that shone through. I think to be a good police officer, you have to really care about people. It’s not just about being strong - you’re a social worker, a mental health worker, a youth offending officer, you do all of that in one job.”

She’s speaking from experience, having spent more than ten years with London’s Metropolitan Police, until 2015. She shared her own story in her memoir On The Line: Life - and Death - In the Metropolitan Police, but with her latest book, the focus is on the accounts of mostly middle-aged, retired women from Yorkshire’s police forces.

Vinten talks of her passion for sharing women’s achievements in policing. Though the true stories in the book have happened in the region, they are representative, she says, of the work of policewomen across the country on a daily basis.

“There are lots of policewomen out there who do amazing things and I think a lot of the real crime books and crime fiction are not as focused around women as they could be so I thought there was a bit of a gap there,” she explains.

“Happy Valley in particular really inspired me. I love Sally Wainwright’s writing. She often focuses on older women, middle-aged women, whereas a lot of popular fiction doesn’t really concentrate on that age bracket.

"A lot of the women I interviewed for the book have been in the police for 25, 30 years so they are middle-aged women and they’ve got a lot to say, a lot of interesting stories...It was really important for me to get across their authentic sayings, how they describe things, their feelings.

"I want the readers to feel like they’re walking alongside these women. It’s written like you’re there, you’re going through this incident and investigation with them. It’s like reading a crime novel but everything that happens in the book is real.”

"I’ve anonymised names and places in the book...to protect the victims, families and police officers,” she continues, “but these women were proud to talk about and to share what they’ve done and the justice they got for their victims.”

From domestic abuse to kidnap, gang crime and murder, the women tell of the heinous acts they have faced throughout their careers. But Hertfordshire-born Vinten says she also wanted to capture the essence of the Calder Valley-set Happy Valley series, sharing messages of justice and hope amongst dark and upsetting incidents.

“What these police officers are doing is actually changing lives and achieving justice for people,” she says. “The women I spoke to are brave, unstoppable, honourable and were one hundred per cent dedicated to improving the communities they policed.”

Part of Vinten’s reason for writing was to open people’s eyes to the realities of policing as a woman and to encourage more women to consider a career in the police. Still, she acknowledges that policing is “facing its biggest challenge yet - restoring the trust of British women”, amid criticism over misogyny and sexism.

She’s spoken before about her own experiences and earlier this year, told PA news agency that a toxic “lads culture” still exists in Britain’s biggest police force and that she believed there were similar problems throughout the entire police service.

“The focus has been mainly on the Met since the murder of Sarah Everard,” she said, “however if we gave each UK police service the same level of scrutiny we would find exactly the same issues – sexist jokes, unacceptable WhatsApp discussions, harassment of female officers and men using their power to access vulnerable women.”

Essex-based Vinten left the force in 2015, mainly for mental health reasons, having become particularly sensitive to cases involving children after the birth of her sons. She currently works as a ward clerk at a local hospital, as well as writing.

“Most of [my time in the Met] I absolutely loved. I was surrounded by mostly excellent colleagues and it’s a job like no other,” she says. “For most of my career, I was on the response team in uniform attending emergency calls. I really liked the action.”

Vinten says, however, that she was on the receiving end of “inappropriate” sexist comments. Reflecting now, she says: “There was definitely a culture where you didn’t feel like you could speak up. If somebody did something and you thought I don’t think that’s okay, you’d heard stories about people who had spoken up before and made complaints and they were always people who were ostracised, not trusted anymore, not thought of as one of the family.”

“Having said all of that, things are definitely starting to change,” she adds. “Although it’s awful every time a new thing comes out, a new police officer is exposed, we kind of have to go through that.

"It’s literally like scraping out out the bottom of the barrel…I think for women who join [policing] now I think they’ll be part of that change and feel more empowered to speak out and stick up for themselves.”

The Real Happy Valley by Alice Vinten, published by Transworld, is out now.