Books / Fiction
Interview: Anna Freeman
Bristol writer Anna Freeman’s new novel, Five Days of Fog, which follows a female criminal gang in London during the Great Smog of 1952, is enjoying great reviews just as her debut The Fair Fight did. As well as fiction, Anna writes poetry, hosts and co-produces leading Bristol spoken word night, BlahBlahBlah, and is a Creative Writing lecturer at Bath Spa University. She tells Julie Fuster more about the new novel and writing historical fiction.
Five Days of Fog is your second historical novel about women in what are seen as traditionally male worlds. What attracts you to writing about this?
It’s fascinating whenever I discover that women were doing things I hadn’t previously known they were. This time it was because I came across a code of behaviour for a gang of women (in Brian McDonald’s non-fiction book, Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants) and the rules were so specific, so like something from a film, and absolutely real. I knew I wanted to spend some time imagining being part of that world. I was also really interested in the moral choices that gang members would have to make, the grey areas between right and wrong. That just seemed to go so perfectly with the idea of the fog.
is needed now More than ever
Are gender inequality issues in your head when you write?
I think about class and gender quite a lot. But that’s just because I’m interested in the way those things impact our lives, not because I’m trying to teach anyone anything. If I have any aim with my novels, it’s to write something exciting that people might enjoy taking on holiday. Anything else is a bonus.
Anna Freeman’s new novel has been receiving great reviews
Five Days of Fog takes place during the 1952 Great Smog. How important is it for you to be historically accurate?
The great smog was an incredible – and horrible – event. I actually had to play it down a little bit, because it was so unbelievably dense that it would have been very difficult to have my characters get anywhere if I had shown it quite as thick as it really was. And it was deadly poisonous. People were dropping dead – perhaps as many as 12000 people over 4 days, people who seemed otherwise healthy.
A lot of the details in the book came from real life, from newspapers or from anecdotal accounts of the time, as well as from history books. Ultimately, I really am just trying to write exciting stories. I want the narrative to have as much space as it needs, really. So I think I’m aiming for historical plausibility rather than historical fact.
Do you think that your poetry has an impact on your fiction?
I don’t think my poetry and prose have much to do with each other. I feel like it’s a coincidence that they’re both made of words, like they use different parts of my brain. I love the spoken word scene, love watching other people perform poetry, and being involved with it has expanded my life, but novel writing is much more important to me on a personal level.
There are some brilliant poetry events in Bristol. As well as the event that I run (BlahBlahBlah, which is at Bristol old Vic and Wardrobe Theatre), Raise the Bar are doing good work and so are Milk Poetry. And there are loads of smaller poetry nights popping up all the time.
Anna Freeman’s new novel, Five Days of Fog is out now. For more information, visit
https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9780297872023
Read more: 2018 in Books and Spoken Word highlights
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