In conversation with Louisa Treger

Sandra Davis, Partner

Good afternoon everyone, welcome and thank you for joining us for today’s Mishcon Academy session. This event forms part of our ongoing series of conversations, videos and podcasts exploring some of the most significant issues shaping business society and the world around us. Before we begin and this is a bit like Strictly Come Dancing, I’m going to read from a cue card, a quick note for those joining online. Hello. Your microphone and camera will be switched off. If you have a question during the session please use the Q&A function and we’ll pick up as many questions as possible. If you experience any technical issues, please use the chat and hopefully a member of the team will be happy to help you. If you are in the room, simply raise your hand during our Q&A session and we’ll get a big mike that looks like that to you. Now this is not Louisa Treger, this is all about Louisa but I’m Sandra Davis, a partner in the family department. I’ve been here so long that very topically I could actually got out earlier than doing 2 life sentences for murder but I haven’t been here long enough to actually remember Lord Mishcon, our Founding Partner actually acting for Ruth Ellis. I know however that for him, and he only acted for her for a very short period of time, just under a day, it cast a long shadow over his career that he wasn’t able to save her and he would have been very pleased and thrilled and felt that life had come full circle that one of our partners, Katy Colton, who is a partner in the politics and public affairs department, was able to succeed in a way that he didn’t, with a posthumous pardon for Ruth Ellis and we do have a member of her family actually watching online so, hello, this is a very special moment for us. But I am going to just give Katy an opportunity to tell you about how she came and we came to be instructed about what you did and how you feel after the event. So Katy over to you, please tell us a bit about your experience of getting this very special pardon for Ruth.

Katy Colton, Partner

 Thank you very much and I’m absolutely delighted with this big mike which as Sandra says, is making me feel that powerful. So thank you very much for that introduction. As Sandra says, I had the great privilege of acting for Ruth Ellis’ grandchildren in securing the conditional pardon for Ruth which is recognition of the fact that Ruth was failed all those years ago by the State and by society and she should not have been hanged and as Sandra says, we’re joined by her granddaughter, Laura, online and are so pleased that you are here. The firm’s connection with Ruth’s case began in 1955, so I’m not surprised Sandra you don’t remember that and with just 22 hours remaining before Ruth’s execution, Victor Mishcon, our Founder, tried to secure a last minute reprieve. He was unsuccessful and on the 13 July Ruth was hanged at Holloway Prison and she became the last woman executed in Britain. We were instructed by her grandchildren almost 70 years later and it was by chance where I got a call from another partner in the firm to say, we have a client on a different matter, he’s the grandson of Ruth, do you think anything could be done and it’s amazing to think back to that conversation and where we got to. And the members of the team are here and it was a real privilege to trawl through the original evidence, to build up a picture of who Ruth was, what happened to her, what history, what circumstances of her case weren’t listened to, weren’t heard and the prejudice that she faced in that trial and to bring that to the fore now. And to look at it through our eyes now in the present how women are treated in the Criminal Justice System, how women are still being failed and present that in a package to look at the sustained emotional sexual domestic abuse that Ruth suffered and how that impacted her case. So our task was not to dispute that Ruth had killed David Blakely, it was to show why the full circumstance of her case should have prevented her execution. Put simply we had to bring back into the picture what had been left out. What happened to Ruth, the cumulative impact of that abuse and why it matter to the justice of her punishment and we were delighted for the family, we can’t really put it into words, when in July of this year the King granted Ruth that conditional pardon. And for the firm, as Sandra says, it brought our involvement full circle from Victor Mishcon trying all those years ago to seek reprieve, to us being successful in obtaining the pardon. But for the family the significance is far more personal. Laura has spoken of the devastating consequences of the execution on Ruth’s children and the effects felt by subsequent generations and no legal decision can undo that loss but acknowledging an injustice matters and I think that brings us to today’s conversation. Our legal work and Louisa’s fiction are different undertakings but there is a connection and I think it’s the importance of looking beyond a label or a headline and seeing the person who lies behind it. And that’s the connection I would draw today between our work and the themes of today’s event. The emotional lives behind public stories, vulnerability within relationships and the possibility of rebuilding a life and so I am really excited to hear this discussion and thank you very much for including me.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Thank you.

Applause

Louisa. So Louisa I’d like to introduce you to everyone. Louisa is an authoress, this is the fifth book and I’d just like to share with you that in order to interview Louisa, I read all 5 books cover to cover in the space of the summer and I have to absolutely recommend each and every one of them to you. If you love and adore this, which you will because the characters jump out of the page. You will find something resonating for you in each and every one of the other books, even the men in this audience might find something really special about the powerful women that Louisa writes about. So Louisa, just to introduce you, you’ve twice been selected at the Time Historical Book of the Month, most recently… three times, okay.

Louisa Treger, Author

Because this book as well.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Excellent, brilliant. You’ve written for numerous publications. You’ve made radio appearances and you regularly appear at literary festivals and of course you’re the deputy chair of the board of the Oxford Literary Festival, which is a great position to have. Now let’s start from the beginning. You trained as a classical musician?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes that’s right. So first of all I just want to say thank you for that incredibly generous introduction. Yes, so I think I was always meant to be a writer. I was the kind of child that, you know, scribbles short stories and kept diaries and read cereal boxes obsessively. But I discovered an aptitude for the violin and went to music college and then had a career as a freelance violinist. But the whole time I was conscious of this uneasy feeling like you’ve left something behind but you don’t know what it was and I felt I ought to be doing something but not doing it made me unhappy but I didn’t quite know what it was. And then my career came to an end because I came down with the condition ME and I had to take a year out. I didn’t have the strength to, you know, lift the instrument to my chin much less perform on stage and then I had a kind of eureka moment which just floated into my head fully formed and made me think my subconscious must have been sort of cogitating on it for a long time. And it was this, I wanted to work with words and not music and as soon as I was well enough I did a degree at UCL and a doctorate. And that was fine, I really loved that and the subject of my thesis was Dorothy Richardson who’s an early British modernist writer and she had an affair with H G Wells which I think is not much of a claim to fame because, you know, everybody did at that time.  And I finished it and then gave birth to twins and the whole time, it feels endless you know, when you’re sort of changing nappies and feeding and burping and all the rest of it. The idea circulating in my mind was that Dorothy Richardson’s life story would make a very interesting novel and I didn’t start writing until my 3 children were either in school or at nursery school and I found a transition from academic writing to, you know, being a novelist, fictional stuff was incredibly difficult.

Sandra Davis, Partner

How did you manage to do that and in particular where did music come into the writing?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, yes. Well first of all music is a brilliant training for being a writer. I mean not least because it teaches you the discipline to glue you bottom to that chair and spend hours alone honing your craft. And I think that discipline is the number 1 attribute you need for being a writer.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Having just had 2 babies it’s sort of not, not understandable how you could actually glue yourself to a chair and do something wholeheartedly in a focussed way?

Louisa Treger, Author

There was a gap, my brain went to mush for several years after I had my babies and it wasn’t until the youngest one was at nursery school.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Right.

Louisa Treger, Author

So there was a gap to sort of re-gather. There are numerous parallels between music and writing like onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhythm, tone, colour, I mean I could go on and on. So I drew on everything that I knew about music and I didn’t do a creative writing degree although I would have loved to have done one, there wasn’t space with these 3 little people in my life.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So how did you find the ability to actually sit down and write because your writing is very lyrical?

Louisa Treger, Author

Thank you. Well I mean really by sitting down and working and working and getting it wrong and crying silent tears over my laptop and picking myself up and carrying on working. And as well as drawing on music I also learned a lot from reading. I’ve always loved reading but now I began to, um, write in a kind of, sorry read in a very nuts and bolts way like, how does the author do that, how did they do this.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And was there any mentor, was there any particular novelist that you drew inspiration from in terms of your writing?

Louisa Treger, Author

I think that my debut was actually Paula McLain with the Paris Wife. I don’t know how many of you know that novel, I really recommend it if you don’t. But she showed me what could be done with biographical fiction, how to really get into the heart and soul of another person.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And given that you started off with the emphasis on a character from your, your PHD, from your post-grad. How much research did you do to arrive at the novel that you ultimately first wrote?

Louisa Treger, Author

I guess I pretty well knew Dorothy quite well, you know, I’d been sort of studying her for 4 years but all my novels start with character and they start with a total emersion into that character. I read everything that’s been read about that person, I read everything that’s been written by them, you know, whether it’s letters or books or whatever. And I also like to go to the locations of my novel because, you know, where my novel’s set because I find that really helps bring it alive.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So how did you therefore deal with Mad Woman…

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

…which takes place inside a psychiatric institution in America? Not exactly an easy place for you to replicate?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well the novel is set on Blackwell’s Island which is now, oh my gosh I’ve blanked it. Rosewell Island and I went there. I went there on the cable car.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Oh you did.

Louisa Treger, Author

And I walked the asylum and not much is left of the original building, only the octagonal tower which has been turned into a luxury block of flats. But there was an old age home next door and I spoke to an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair and he, you know, he pointed out where the grounds of the asylum used to be, he didn’t seem to be happy living next door.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Louisa, just, just tell those who haven’t had the benefit of reading Mad Woman…

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes oh of course.

Sandra Davis, Partner

What it’s about.

Louisa Treger, Author

Of course it’s about…

Sandra Davis, Partner

And who it’s about.

Louisa Treger, Author

It’s about, Nellie Bly who was America’s first female investigative journalist and at the end of the 19th century which was a time when women were supposed to be ladylike and reticent and female journalists were supposed to write about things like arts reviews, society gossip, fashion etcetera.  Am I not loud enough?

Sandra Davis, Partner

I’m so sorry your mike’s cutting out.

Louisa Treger, Author

Oh okay of course, I’m sorry if anybody missed anything and I see what you mean about the sensation or power. So Nellie was determined to write serious hard news and she got her first big scoop by getting committed to this notorious asylum in order to report on the wretched conditions faced by patients.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And your novels seem to focus on unconventional women. What motivates you to write about women who pushed against the expectations of their time?

Louisa Treger, Author

To be honest, my first 3 novels I sort of stumbled on them by chance.

Sandra Davis, Partner

How so?

Louisa Treger, Author

For example, with Nellie Bly a friend of mine said, have you heard of Nellie Bly, she’s the kind of woman you write about. But I chose Ruth Ellis and I was very struck listening to you and Katy talk, my motivations for writing that novel were exactly the same as yours. I’d always been fascinated by Ruth Ellis, I’d always felt there was something in her story that hadn’t been fully told and it was very important to me to uncover the woman behind the tabloid headlines and tell her story from her point of view.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So are you trying to correct the historical record or are you more interested in opening up fresh emotional truths about these women?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And how much, how much is characterisation, how much is fiction, how much is real?

Louisa Treger, Author

So, so the latter, I don’t like telling my readers what to think or feel. I always prefer them to draw their own conclusions and everything about that novel is based on the facts of Ruth’s life and case. And obviously being a fiction writer I have imaginative licence to access the emotional depth of the characters and bring their feelings to life as well as the facts. So the big fictionalisation I did was adding a young trainee lawyer called Kitty and I did this because I wanted a strong female character to explore the legal aspects of Ruth’s trial. I couldn’t have done that just from being in Ruth’s head. I also wanted her to provide a broader ethical lens through which to examine Ruth’s case and I needed it to be a woman to show how flipping misogynistic the 1950’s were.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So, do you see contemporary parallels in the way strong or unconventional women are still judged today?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, totally. I mean we don’t even have to have the vocabulary describe them. A strong woman is called shrill or aggressive whereas a man displaying those characteristics is sort of hailed as a leader.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So do you think Ruth would have been treated differently by the public or the legal system if she’d been a man?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yeah, so, so this is, oh if she’d have been a man?

Sandra Davis, Partner

Yes. Yes.

Louisa Treger, Author

Well you know I think Ruth broke every rule of her gender and class. I mean she wasn’t respectable. She was mother to 2 children by 2 different men and at the time of the shooting she was sleeping with 2 men and she was definitely judged for that in a way a man would not have been.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So looking at her now, what do you want most people to understand about her that’s been missed or misunderstood?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well there is several things. I want them to know that she was a trailblazer, you know, she was a single mum, running a successful business and she was London’s youngest nightclub manager. So she was a trailblazer and I think most people don’t know that. And I want them to know that her father was abusive and her first husband was abusive so she was, she was fatally drawn to men who hurt her and I think she was aware that it was trap but she couldn’t break out of it. It was like, you know, in her book, love hurt, that’s what love was and it was almost what she deserved. And I also would like people to know, I mean I’m sure you went into this, the extent of the abuse she endured at David Blakely’s hands.

Sandra Davis, Partner

But she didn’t share that with anyone?

Louisa Treger, Author

No she didn’t, she didn’t. Interestingly she didn’t want to be reprieved and I find that trial fascinating because how do you defend somebody who doesn’t want to be defended? She wanted to die, I think she wanted to join David Blakely, she had a horror of a long prison sentence when in her view she’d come out old and finish. But at the same time her defence was shockingly weak. It was, so just going back to Ruth, she didn’t do anything to reduce her sentence. She could have pleaded insanity. She refused and she didn’t reveal the role of her other lover, Desmond Cussen which is all in the book. I don’t want to go too much into it because it’s a spoiler. But anyway her defence chose not to explore this horrific history of abuse and I think that was because of the class divide in the 1950’s. David was an upper class man and Ruth was a working class girl who had the effrontery to sleep with him and then kill him.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Of course now days we’d have diminished responsibility and the whole landscape…

Louisa Treger, Author

That’s right.

Sandra Davis, Partner

…of law would be different and the outcome would be different.

Louisa Treger, Author

That’s right, so one of the things Ruth’s case, Ruth’s death did was catalyse the campaign against capital punishment. There was a huge outcry after her death. Diminished responsibility entered the law in 1957, 2 years after she was hanged and capital punishment was abolished in 1965 and the same year, Holloway’s death row, where Ruth spent her last weeks and days, was demolished. And so it’s ironic, Ruth always wanted to be somebody but in her death she had an impact that she never could have predicted I think so she was a trailblazer in her life and in her death.

Sandra Davis, Partner

There has been quite a lot of focus on Ruth Ellis over the years.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

There’s been a film, there has been a TV series. What about your book is different? Why should people read your book rather than watch the film or watch the TV series?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes. So I have read wonderful biographies of Ruth and I’ve watched the movies but I felt in them that there was a slightly unknowable quality to Ruth and that’s where being a novelist, you know, comes into its own because it gives me licence to imagine myself into her private thoughts. I mean what does a woman think when she’s sitting in solitary confinement apart from the wardresses who are with her 24 hours, you know, what’s going on in her mind? And I was, I was helped by having access to her prison records, you know, which noted down what her moods were and you know, what she talked about but really the fictional form gave me licence to explore her mind to the full.

Sandra Davis, Partner

How does she fit with the other women you’ve written about? What connects her story to wider themes in your work?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes. So I write about women who were trailblazers like Ruth who refused to conform, struggled to find their place in the world and often suffered for it but achieved extraordinary things.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Um, what lessons do you think we can learn from your novels and how you write about the characters and how much of those characters resonate for you, and are part of you?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes. Yes well I must say Ruth has haunted me. I don’t know if you felt that Katy but she, you know, I’m working on another novel and she just will not leave my head. And with Ruth’s case I think the lessons are slightly different. The lessons are perhaps about the failings of the justice system and as Katy said, the law is still failing women who kill long-term partners in self-defence after years of abuse and I was completely shocked when I discovered that in the course of my research. And also the impacts of domestic abuse, I mean research now is showing us that victims of long-term abuse are actually PTSD sufferers and they experience changes, their thought processes, their perceptions and their ability to make decisions. So I think, I think actually what all my books teach me, hopefully readers, is in some ways we’ve come far but in some ways things haven’t changed at all and there’s still a great deal of work to be done.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So what do Dorothy Richardson, Ginny Courtauld, Nellie Bly, Dora Marr and Ruth Ellis have in common for you?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well they were all strong extraordinary women, who didn’t want to conform and you know, it wasn’t easy not to conform but they had things they were very good at and you know, achieved huge things.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And how has that impacted on your life? You changed your life when you morphed from being…

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

…a musician to a novelist. And you also have reinvented yourself in so doing but you had children and you wrote during Covid and you also wrote when you were getting divorced.

Louisa Treger, Author

That’s right, yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And you are now a different person?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

How has all of that impacted on you? How have the characters impacted on you?

Louisa Treger, Author

I guess the strength of the characters has been very inspiring and fiction has always given me an escape, you know, it’s a place to go, another place to go when life is tough and you know, it’s like a whole fictional world that I can sort of order and control as I want to when I can’t do that in my life.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So for you it was a retreat?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, yes. It was a refuge, a retreat, a haven.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And how easy was it for you to actually accomplish that going through all the emotional trauma…

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

…that you must have been experiencing in the background or in the foreground?

Louisa Treger, Author

I think maybe there was a link between my life and my writing, for example, in Covid I was locked down with my ex-husband, we were separated but not divorced and that’s when I wrote my novel sat in an asylum. You know, there were lots of parallels, remember how at the beginning of Covid we were all quite scared because we didn’t know what was happening next and you know, that was what life was like in the asylum, very precarious.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And how supportive was everyone in your family then of you changing career and trying to establish yourself?

Louisa Treger, Author

I think I’ve always been very lucky because I have huge support from my sisters and my parents, one of my sisters is here and my children have been really supportive actually.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Um, in terms of your writing and your reinvention, do you feel like you are a different person since you began writing and if so, how?

Louisa Treger, Author

I think I feel like I was the person I was always meant to be if that makes sense. My ex-husband was very powerful and I kind of lost myself in trying to accommodate him. But writing has really given me an identity that’s just about me, it’s not about being someone’s daughter or sister or wife or even mum, you know, it’s just about me. So it’s given me recognition on my own terms, self-respect, a sense of purpose, an identity.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And do you think that actually it was very fortunate for you that you found that purpose when you were going through your divorce?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes I think it was an absolute blessing but there were other strategies I had for repair.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And what were those?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well I think the first one is taking care of myself in very simple ways. I mean as simple as sitting outside with a cup of coffee when the sun’s shining and you know, eating well, eating food I liked rather than just eating to exist. I think one can have a makeover, I didn’t but one can do that. And also about friendships. I was, well I was nurtured by my family but also by very close friends and it’s about finding your community, I think that’s terribly important. I mean if you can find an interest or a passion so much the better. And the other thing is when I separated from my husband, 2 of my children were at university but 1 was still at home and I had to keep things going for her, you know, she needed to be got up for school and you know, she needed me to greet her in the mornings with a smile on my face. So, you know, I had to transcend my own misery but also her routine gave me a structure.

Sandra Davis, Partner

But what you talked about was perhaps a physical reinvention.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

But actually what you went through was a mental psychological reinvention.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And again, for women of a certain age in particular, going through divorce, finding a passion or a sense of purpose outside the family is key isn’t it?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, totally, totally key. I mean also it’s helpful to have a close community of friends, some of whom have been through the same experience because nobody quite understands something like someone who’s going through the same thing at the same time.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So what elements do you think of each of these books are personal to you? The pushing boundaries?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yeah pushing boundaries for sure. Being in an unhappy relationship and I guess struggling to find my place. I mean I took rather a circuitous route to being a novelist and their strength was always very inspiring and they didn’t care what people think. I think it helped me reach that place as well. You know I used to be terribly concerned by what people think and I don’t care now.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Writing a novel doesn’t necessarily mean that you can actually articulate or sit on a platform and talk about your life and how you actually immersed yourself in writing. How do you find that element of it because you have admitted that you love sitting in a room on your own, immersing yourself? Even this is a totally different experience.

Louisa Treger, Author

So being a writer’s a very strange game because you spend, you know, months sitting at home communing with either dead or imaginary people in your head and then suddenly you’re kind of thrust blinking into the spotlight and I mean, I’m out of my comfort zone but I actually, I find I love it and I’m very grateful to be able to talk to like-minded people about something I’m passionate about.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Could you when you were married have imagined that you would be doing anything like this?

Louisa Treger, Author

No, no, no. I was invisible. I was literally the invisible woman to the extent that my ex-husband’s first name is Julian and we once had a dinner and somebody wrote a thank you note to, it said, ‘dear Julian and Julia’, I mean I was literally, it was like, you know, an appendage.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So how long do you think it has taken you to find your voice? Presumably you began to find it when you were writing and…

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

…it emerged more strongly?

Louisa Treger, Author

That’s right. I mean it definitely took a leap after my separation and actually you know, you, it was the hardest decision I ever made to separate and I had 3 children to consider and then there was a long period of walking through fire but I think nobody talks enough about the relief you feel when you come out the other side and you’ve sort of found yourself and you feel much more empowered.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And the empowerment you feel I assume is something that everyone woman could and should be able to feel?

Louisa Treger, Author

Absolutely and you don’t need to be a writer, you know, or an artist. I think it’s something accessible to every woman if first of all she believes that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and you know, trust me there is and also, you know, uses these very simple tools to get back on her feet and it’s a gradual process but it works.

Sandra Davis, Partner

When you began to write, who did you turn to to evaluate what you were writing? How did you get any kind of useful feedback?

Louisa Treger, Author

So I did a correspondence course and my tutor was the late Helen Dunmore, I don’t know if you are familiar with her work but she was the most, and if you’re not, go and buy her books, she’s really a wonderful writer and she was a most empathetic and constructive teacher and then there was a long period where I was self-taught and my first literary agent was the most brilliant tutor.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And of, I assume actually I know the answer to this but of all the women that you have written about, I assume from what you’ve said that Ruth is the one that actually has haunted you the most.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes, definitely.

Sandra Davis, Partner

You didn’t feel that Mad Woman which actually took someone who had gone way beyond the bounds of what was possible and acceptable at the time was I fighting spirit that actually sat with you and has lived with you since then.

Louisa Treger, Author

So Nellie Bly, the subject of Mad Woman was a survivor and she went on to do many extraordinary things. I mean just one of them is that she sailed round the world solo in less time that Phileas Fogg the protagonist, you know, in 80 days around the world. Sorry Jules Verne’s protagonist, Phileas Fogg was the character. Um, so she sort of triumphed but with Ruth there’s this terrible feeling of you know, what could have been. So I did an event with Laura Enston last night, Ruth’s granddaughter and hi Laura, I’m very happy to see you but what Laura was saying, she talked about being in the present with her children because that was something neither Ruth nor Georgina, Ruth’s daughter and Laura’s mother had had and I found that really wrenching and it’s that sort of aspect of Ruth, that kind of wasted potential that, that really gets me. I mean I nearly cried during the event last night.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Mm. I am sure that for the family to read how you’ve actually descended into the detail of her character has been incredibly moving and rewarding.

Louisa Treger, Author

I hope so, I mean one thing Laura said was that she knew that Ruth had this terrible toxic relationship with David Blakely but she didn’t know that there were some good bits, you know, that she loved him and they had some good times.

Sandra Davis, Partner

When you think about writing a novel, how long does it take for you to do the research? How long does it take for you to find somebody and what’s the process of writing for you?

Louisa Treger, Author

So start to finish it’s 2 years and I kind of like to have them lined up so I very often know who I’m going to write about before I finish a novel. Um, and then I, you know, do this immersive research that I’ve talked about but actually I make myself start writing before I’ve finished researching because for a start you don’t want to have this enormous kind of, you know, stack of research where you can’t remember anything and you don’t know where anything is. I’m not very organised, I don’t have a good filing system or anything like that. So there’s a kind of period where I’m researching and writing at the same time and then the research tails off and the writing takes over.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And how do you structure your books. Some of them start at the end and move to the beginning and some of them start at the beginning and move to the end.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And some of them drift in between. How, how do you decide how to deal with that?

Louisa Treger, Author

So there are two kinds of fiction writers and there’s what’s known as a plotter who meticulously structures the book and you know, some of my friends have post it notes and a very clear structure and I think that’s wonderful but I can’t do it. So I’m the other kind of writer who writes by the seat of their pants. So honestly I, you know, the research gives me the plot if you like, the framework, um, but I write by instinct. I structure it by instinct. Sometimes it’s like driving in thick fog where you can’t see an inch, you know, in front of your nose but it sort of works out in the end.

Sandra Davis, Partner

And the other women that you’ve written about, again, how, how did you arrive at the decision to write about them? Dora Marr for example?

Louisa Treger, Author

So Dora Marr I chose, again I’ve always had a huge art history crush on her and she was probably most famous as being Picasso’s weeping woman, his lover and his mews but she’s actually this incredibly, um, avant-garde and imaginative photographer and I think a lot of people don’t know that, you know, she’s just the weeping woman as if the most interesting thing about her was that she cried and I wanted to draw her out from under Picasso’s long, dark shadow.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So Louisa, what’s next for you? Who is on the drawing board? Do you have an idea and if so, who?

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes I do. So, um, this is a bit of shift for me but I’m now writing about a mews who does not lose her power. She’s an empowered woman and it’s Gala Dali who was Salvador Dali’s wife and mews. But she was so much more, she used to critique his art, she was his business manager, she dealt with the galleries. I mean she really built him up and he, without Gala, he wouldn’t be probably the most famous surrealist painter.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Now if there was anyone with a burning desire in the audience to change career and become a writer. What tips would you give him and how difficult was it for you to get a publisher?

Louisa Treger, Author

Oh I mean you need to, you need perseverance and discipline I’d say both those things. You need the discipline to sit on your bottom and get that first draft out and not worry about whether it’s any good or not. I think that’s the key. Once you’ve got it out, you can like work away at it like a sculpture and good writing is re-writing. I mean I think my debut novel I re-drafted 6 times and I don’t mean that I edited it, I mean I took it apart and rebuilt it from scratch. So you need that perseverance and you know, I think rejection is the path of every writer and it happens at any stage. So you also need the resilience to keep going through that but I would say, keep your day job as well.

Sandra Davis, Partner

I was about to say, this is not something you can do in your spare time?

Louisa Treger, Author

No. Well yes.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Well how many unfinished novels or how many other drafts do you have in a drawer in your house?

Louisa Treger, Author

I have 2 unpublished novels that were rejected.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So there you go.

Louisa Treger, Author

But you never know. I may go back to them one day, I may not but you know, it’s the path of a writer.

Sandra Davis, Partner

So how far in to the new novel are you?

Louisa Treger, Author

So I’m just over half way through the first draft.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Very impressive. Well I can absolutely as I’ve said, highly recommend that you all take one of Louisa’s books and read it from cover to cover and share with her what you feel about Ruth when you’ve read it and see if it’s changed your attitude to her from what you know. It’s been an absolute delight and a pleasure Louisa

Louisa Treger, Author

Oh Sandra thank you.

Sandra Davis, Partner

I can’t, can’t feel more keenly how marvellous it is that you’ve changed your life round and I feel so proud that you have actually achieved so much.

Louisa Treger, Author

Thank you Sandra and it was just so wonderful to be interviewed by you.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Thank you.

Louisa Treger, Author

I enjoyed it so much.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Now, we have an audience online, we have an audience here. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask Louisa about the process of writing, Ruth Ellis or generally? Kay?

Katy Colton

I apologise in advance because this isn’t a question but I wanted to really pick up on what you said about Ruth staying with you because I felt the same and for me, um, I think you’re right in terms of wasted potential but I think also I was really struck by how she was wronged by so many people.

Louisa Treger, Author

It’s true.

Katy Colton

Over such a period.

Louisa Treger, Author

It’s true.

Katy Colton

And even when you talk about her defence there’s questions about who actually paid her defence, I think there’s, yes her gender was a big part but also her class, um, but it just, it was a repeated behaviour. She could have been saved at so many different points and I think that even goes into today. It wasn’t just then. I mean, one thing I was really struck by it with our involvement is that Ruth Ellis wax figure was in Madam Tussauds in the Chamber of Horrors up until 2 days after she was pardoned and it took, there was going to be a story I think it was going to be in the Mail and you know, the family had been fighting for years for her to be removed from the Chamber of Horrors. She was next to Jack the Ripper and it took for the pardon to happen, even when you look at it through today’s lens, that wasn’t enough. It had to be the pardon and press attention on it and I think that just shows, yes we’ve come far in terms of how we perceive victims of domestic abuse but really, you know, there’s so much more to go.

Louisa Treger, Author

I totally agree with you and actually, I mean there are women, you know, in the past couple of years who’ve been, um, convicted of murder with quite steep minimum tariffs, um, for killing themselves in self-defence, sorry killing their partner’s in self-defence. I mean someone called Sonja Blenkiron, um, was convicted of murder, I think with a minimum tariff of 22 years or something. And she killed her abusive partner with a single stab wound as he was strangling her. I mean it’s all so shocking how much work there’s still to be done. But I agree with everything you say.

Louisa Treger, Author

Thanks Katy. Anyone else in the audience?

Audience

Do you think you could write about men who have suffered injustice and do you think that men unclear 46.19 position to unclear 46.19 women? Do you think a man could have written a similar book?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well, I mean there have been male writer’s who’ve written very convincingly about female characters and in my second novel, The Dragon Lady, about a third of the novelists from the perspective of Stephen Courtauld, um.

Sandra Davis, Partner

How difficult did you find that to put yourself in the shoes of a man writing about a woman?

Louisa Treger, Author

So that particular man, was very interesting. He was a First World War hero and he was, you know, he was traumatised by it but he never spoke of and he was also mad about art, he was very sensitive, he was very nice to his wife. So he was a very sympathetic character but you know, could I have written in the voice of David Blakely for example, who is, you know, a horrible person although he came from a troubled background, you can understand you know, why he turned out the way he did. But not an unsympathetic man, I think I would struggle.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Mm, interesting. Thank you for that. Yes?

Mishcon

There’s just a really nice comment from someone online, Deborah Eaton, she said, ‘did you know that there was some historical research which showed that judges passed harsher sentences on women than on men in domestic violence cases. The theory being that judges have an innate bias against fallen women. Ruth’s story is one where every base was loaded against her. It is sad that she didn’t go to Victor Mishcon earlier or let him do what he wanted to do. I came to the Bar because of my feeling that what had happened to Ruth was wrong and unjust. She has touched so many lives, she is a legend and a trailblazer and Mishcon’s were the ones who totally understood that. Thanks to all.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Thank you for that Deborah.

Louisa Treger, Author

That’s wonderful it really is.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Thank you. Anyone else?

Audience

Thank you very much.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Can you speak up?

Audience

Yes sure. Picking up on your point about point of view and you talked about I think it was Stephen Courtauld just then. At what point of your process do you select the point of view in terms of first versus third person or past or present and is that sort of changed depending on the protagonist?

Louisa Treger, Author

Whether it’s first or third? Um, it depends on the protagonist honestly. I mean with Ruth I could not have written this novel from inside her head and I can’t even tell you why. I think I just, it’s because she lost herself so much I needed that, you know, bit of external distance.

Sandra Davis, Partner

I think also the fact that she had children might have made it more difficult for you to get inside her head, what do you think?

Louisa Treger, Author

Well that was, I think that’s right because she was quite neglectful of her children and after she hanged they were sort of left to fend for themselves and I’m the opposite kind of mother, I’m sort of almost neurotically present. So that was the aspect of her character I really struggled with and found difficult to come to terms with.

Sandra Davis, Partner

But then you didn’t have the experience that she had had both in her upbringing and in her relationships.

Louisa Treger, Author

Yes. Not that’s true. I mean I think the abuse broke down her boundaries so she could not protect her children and you know, they went through everything she went through really but still that doesn’t make me comfortable with it.

Sandra Davis, Partner

No.

Louisa Treger, Author

You could understand it.

Sandra Davis, Partner

She wasn’t capable of looking after herself let alone anyone else.

Louisa Treger, Author

No exactly, exactly. Exactly.

Sandra Davis, Partner

Anyone else? Online or not? So the back of the book reads, ‘utterly compelling, this is a story that demands to be read, discussed and remembered. A powerful and compassionate novel that gives voice to one of the centuries most misunderstood women, both thrilling and seductive, it will break many hearts. What an achievement’. And I hope that you feel that when you read the book. Thank you so much Louisa.

Louisa Treger, Author

Thank you for having me.

Applause