Barnsley author Milly Johnson says events at Tan Hill mirror the plot of her Christmas book

Sometimes us authors write a book with a strange buzz about it, as if we have mined into a magic seam, something inexplicable but special.

This happened to me when writing ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ in January 2020.

It poured out of me and I felt a definite tingle inside. Not that it’s the first time that’s happened to me. When I was writing The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew, a certain politician seemed to be acting out the words I was committing to paper and I thought then that maybe I should pack in writing, buy a tent, move to Blackpool and take psychic readings.

But what happened at the Tan Hill Inn in Richmond at the weekend when a group of strangers were snowed in to the remote pub, takes it all to another level.

My book is about six people holed up in an inn on the North Yorkshire moors just before Christmas, having to muck in with cooking and entertaining themselves.

And in the four days they spend with each other, they are all changed forever, they are bonded in a way that only a bubble can create (trust me, I did Come Dine With Me and I know how quickly that happens).

So many people wrote and presumed I’d based my Figgy Hollow Inn on Tan Hill, but I’ve never heard of it until this weekend. Seeing it on the TV with its rugged interior and fire blazing, it was uncannily like the inn in my imagination. The outside was near as dammit identical.

I needed to write my novel. My father had died the month before and I wanted to take the happy Christmas I should have had and mould it into a joyous snowball of a book, one that uplifted me and made the world all right again. It poured out of me. I had a rough draft in less than three weeks. The characters came to life so quickly it was as if I was writing from memory rather than invention.

No one then had any idea that the Christmas last year would indeed be like no other, that only six people would be allowed to sit around a table. And they’d have a reunion of course – they were bound by something strange as the Tan Hill Inners are.

I couldn’t be more delighted. To me it proves that I got my story spot on. Now if anyone calls my book ‘unrealistic’ I can point them to a million worldwide reports about the idyll of Tan Hill.

I’ve had conversations with novelists about this subject before and most of us have got at least one story of how scary it can be when our writing takes shape in the real world and sometimes you do have a moment where you are a little reticent to put pen to paper in case you are unleashing something you’d rather not.

Of course it’s all coincidence but sometimes it feels more.

My social media channels have been buzzing since the ‘weekend like no other, so they made it special’ said one newscaster. I thought, ‘They’ve even taken the tagline on the book – A Christmas like no other so they made it special.’

My book is currently number two in the Sunday Times chart, just Richard Osman above me. It’s touched something in people for them to be buying it in such numbers, even before the story of Tan Hill broke. Now, at least readers can experience a virtual semblance of what their guests had.

It might not have an Oasis tribute band in it, but my next one has a Monkees tribute featured. Maybe I should invest in that crystal ball after all.

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Milly Johnson is out now in paperback, (Simon & Schuster).