Blog Tour: The Secrets of Castle du Rêve by Hannah Emery - Guest Post

Today I am delighted to be part of the Blog Tour for The Secrets of Castle du Rêve by Hannah Emery. This intriguing story was published yesterday and to celebrate it, Hannah has stopped by to talk all about castles. Hannah, all yours:

When I was thinking of ideas for The Secrets of Castle du Reve and considering the setting, I knew straight away that I wanted to include a castle. Castles and stories are bound together so often in history, fairy tales and myths, it seemed the perfect choice for the backdrop to my characters’ lives.

Creating the castle was one of my favourite parts of writing the book. I love the idea that one building could be so many places at different points in time: a lavish home; a place to stay for evacuees; a university; a school. I briefly daydreamed about doing some kind of UK castle tour as research but sadly I didn’t feel that my small children would share my enthusiasm for spiral staircases and moments of quiet contemplation. With this in mind, I remembered the castles I already knew, and researched ones I didn’t. Here were the ones that helped the most:

The jewels, the executions, the ghosts, and the spine-tingling Traitors’ Gate: the Tower of London’s glamour, mysteries and grisly histories show just how many secrets castles can keep. One of the most amazing things about places like the Tower of London is how you can feel so connected to things that happened hundreds of years ago. That, and the gift shops.

I adore this place! Peering into the living rooms of families throughout different points in history to see the things they would have had – what’s not to love? York Castle Museum always makes me want to rush home and write hundreds of books about people living in different decades. People from the 1960s fascinate me just as much as medieval ones. I love thinking about what they wore, how their Fairy Liquid bottles looked different from ours, and how on earth they dealt with having no iPhones. 

I’ve never been to Blair Castle in Scotland but I used it as inspiration after I read that evacuees were sent there during WWII. It’s a beautiful castle with the kind of pointed turrets I imagined for Castle du Reve. There was a fascinating story about Blair Castle last year: a letter written from one brother to another during the war was found behind a radiator in the Grand Ballroom after seventy years. The recipient of the letter, Bill, was a seven-year old evacuee who was staying at the castle. I love stories like this – it could be straight out of a novel!

Some of my happiest memories are of family holidays in Wales. We’d pile into my big brother’s orange Fiesta and speed off for days out in places like Beaumaris and Caernarfon. When I was considering what Castle du Reve might be like, I thought about these castles a lot. I remember the spiral staircases, the neverending views and again, that fabulous feeling that I’d stepped back in time. The characters in The Secrets of Castle du Reve are all pulled towards the castle for one reason or another. I’ll always be pulled towards these ones.