How Living In Holland Helps Me Write British Books

I’m writing this sprawling on my sofa in my Amsterdam apartment. It’s the morning after the England football team made history, winning a spot in the semi-finals of the World Cup for the first time since I was ten.

The streets outside are sunny and the silence is occasionally punctuated with the rickety whine of a wheeled suitcase. It feels, as it often does during summer weekends, like I’m on holiday.

I’m lucky, beyond lucky really, to live in this beautiful, safe city where thousands of tourists flock every day. Yet I feel punctured with sadness. The kind of summertime sadness writers like me tap into when writing our domestic thrillers and family dramas.

I’m sad, because today I’m homesick.

I watch videos of the celebrations in English streets that have been shared on social media. Bare-chested men crying of football’s return home. Kids with painted faces. Women in replica shirts jumping up and down, in disbelief. The footballers of my youth celebrating with each other, their barrel bellies a reminder of how much older we all are since 1990. I’m flooded with affection for them all.

I used to love football but working at tabloid newspapers in the mid-2000s killed my enjoyment of the top flight game for a long time. There’s only so many legal notices you can read about bad behaviour that you’re not allowed to report before your respect for the players lands in the toilet. But this World Cup is different. I’ve been hopeful. More than that I’ve been intensely proud. Those passionate but cool-headed young men yesterday, under the paternal waistcoated gaze of Gareth Southgate, were the best of what I miss.

When I got up with my toddler at seven this morning, I found myself uncharacteristically scouring the TV channels and settling on BBC First, watching back to back Midsomer Murders. I’ve never watched Midsomer Murders before.

Living here during and after the referendum, as so many Dutch people asked me (along a spectrum that still runs from sympathy to ridicule) what I think about Brexit, I generally said that I made some kind of lucky escape. And yet, my writing during this time got arguably more nostalgic for the country of my birth.

The UK is far from perfect, as of course is The Netherlands, but the former made me and the latter is shaping me. Being here gives me distance to see the UK clearly, the guts and the glory.

My second book, Don’t Close Your Eyes, was written here. It’s set in Berkshire and Manchester, a far cry from Amsterdam. Until you learn that a crucial block of flats in the Manchester chapters is based on an Amsterdam apartment block that mirrors mine, and the very act of spying on the neighbours – as my character Robin does – comes from the Dutch disdain for curtains.

My third book, Love Will Tear Us Apart, was started in Kent and finished in Amsterdam. It’s set in 1980s Somerset, 2000s London and present day south-west England. All places and times close to my heart, so it was the greatest gift to able to immerse myself in them again.

I’m nervous to say too much as it’s early days, but the novel I’m working on now is set entirely in present day London. A city I now return to as a tourist, after years of rather begrudgingly navigating it as a resident. I can see London in a more complete way from over here. I’m not beset by the tunnel vision that comes from sitting on the tube grinding up and down the underground twice a day. I’m not paying London rents, I can let my characters live in a range of properties that I could never have accessed. Is it wish fulfilment? Not really, because – as is typical for my books – these characters have a Mousetrap of challenges to navigate, but I’m certainly enjoying my Rightmove research.

Being a British author posted overseas lets me join a great tradition of British writers examining our country from afar.

It’s a privilege to live somewhere so beautiful, so European. And I now realise that it’s a privilege to have somewhere so rich in history, so varied in landscape, so filled with diverse people who will still come together in one voice and roar for a team of young footballers, in which to base my books. It’s a privilege to be homesick for England.

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In 2016, Holly’s first book, TRY NOT TO BREATHE, was published across the world.  DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES, was published in summer 2017.  Her latest novel, LOVE WILL TEAR US APART came out in June.

Find out more about her on her website: http://hollyseddon.com/

Follow Holly on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/hollyseddon

About LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

Bestselling author, Holly Seddon, has delivered another page-turning and utterly enthralling novel.

Sometimes a promise becomes a prison.

Fearing eternal singledom, childhood friends Kate and Paul make the age-old vow that if they don’t find love by thirty, they will marry each other.

Years later, with the deadline of their 30th birthdays approaching, the unlikely couple decide to keep their teenage promise. After all, they are such good friends. Surely that’s enough to make a marriage?

Now, on the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary, they will discover that love between men and women is more complex, and more precarious, than they could ever have imagined. As Kate struggles with a secret that reaches far into their past, will the couple’s vow become the very thing that threatens their future?

Love Will Tear Us Apart is a moving and heart-breaking exploration of modern love and friendship, from the bestselling author of Try Not to Breathe.

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