Author Nancy Revell Takes Us Back to Cuthford Manor for the Last Time
Living North caught up with Sunderland author Nancy Revell (AKA Amanda Revell Walton) to find out more on the final instalment of her Cuthford Manor series, and the new statue honouring the Shipyard Girls in Sunderland
Famous for her Shipyard Girls series based on the North East women who stepped up during World War Two, Amanda’s more recent Cuthford Manor series (which includes The Widow’s Choice and A Secret in the Family), picked up the story of fan-favourite Angie who married the wealthy love of her life.
The newest book, A Daughter’s Love (published on 29th January), is just as fraught with family drama as Amanda’s readers have come to expect. We follow Lucy, a blue-blooded young woman disowned by her family for marrying for love. When her mother dies unexpectedly and her father re-enters her life seeking reconciliation, Lucy doesn’t know if she can trust him.
For Amanda, familial tension is a recurring theme. ‘Sometimes a father figure, or it might be a mother figure, aren’t always what everyone would want them to be, or what they seem to be,’ she says. ‘And I suppose with all my books there’s that sense of dysfunctional families but there’s also that sense of finding your own family, and the bonds that make that pseudo family tie.’
Heartbreak, betrayal and loss feature heavily as themes, and Amanda sees it as her responsibility to her readership to not spoon-feed them a happy ending. ‘It’s having that happily ever after but not having it in that saccharin way – more the sort of realistic way where sometimes you don’t get what you want but it can still be okay.’
Amanda takes pride in being able to highlight northern beauty spots in her writing. This series in particular focuses on County Durham, where Amanda spent time as a child. ‘There’s a particularly poignant dramatic scene [which] happens during a visit to High Force and I really enjoyed that because I love that area so much. It was wonderfully selfish to be able to indulge my passion for that area for the book,’ she says. ‘I’m sure people who have been there will be able to see it in their mind’s eye and maybe those who haven’t will be inspired to go there and see it for themselves.’
Although she won’t spoil the ending, Amanda reassures us that the book will be hopeful in tone. ‘I just think it’s something that I feel very strongly about in my own life. You’ve just got to have hope as a survival tactic if nothing else, you know?’
Beyond Cuthford Manor, Amanda has also worked to continue honouring the legacy of the real Shipyard Girls, and a new statue commemorating their work in Sunderland was recently unveiled. Molly, the six foot-tall sculpture, was created by artist Ron Lawson and can be found on the riverside near the National Glass Centre. ‘That was a long time coming. It was fabulous to see it actually happen and take shape, but at the same time I’m still hopeful there’s going to be another commemoration to the women,’ says Amanda. ‘Because what the women were doing was so radical for their time, I would really love to see a slightly more radical interpretation.’
Looking ahead, Amanda is already well underway with her next project, and alongside moving into scriptwriting she’s also undertaking a new genre. ‘I have already written a crime novel. It’s not published yet – that’s going to be published under my own name which is Amanda Revell Walton, and that has the working title of Hacks #The Retributionist and that’s very much focused on drawing from my time as a tabloid journalist.’
