CR spoke with author Michele Guinness

I think we are stuck in our society, in our imaginations, with this sort of alpha-male view of leadership: that it's got to be tough and strong and together and dynamic. Vicky is a dynamic leader, but she's also incredibly vulnerable and I wanted to explore, I suppose, what were the incredible tensions and pressures on somebody in this key leadership job who was also a woman and wanted to do it differently and who was also in an organisation that wasn't really prepared for it and wasn't necessarily ready to accept it. What would that kind of leadership look like? I mean there are enormous pressures anyway on any Archbishop of Canterbury.

I read a couple of biographies: I read Runcie's and then I read George Carey's autobiography. I was horrified at the way they're treated by the press, by the public - and I kind of wondered, in that kind of environment, what does it do to a person? How would you live with it when everybody slags you off with things that you're probably not guilty of? Because I worked with the media and I know the Daily Mail, and I know the Daily Express and several other of the tabloids and I know that it can be a little bit thin on fact, because I've worked in the NHS and I've had to deal with them. But what does that do to a person who is vulnerable and at the receiving end of it and how would they cope and what does forgiveness mean in that context? So there were a whole variety of themes that started to emerge, that I'd never anticipated - but once they emerged I really wanted to explore them.

Its fun to do it in a novel form: you don't need to sit down and write a great thesis; you can tell it in a story - and I suppose that's my Jewish background: stories are wonderful.

Emily: What I loved when reading the book was how you go back and forth between the future of 2020, when Vicky first becomes Archbishop, but then you go back into the past and tell a bit more of her own background and the various positions that the Church of England is in at various points. Why was it that you decided to write in this particular style?

Michele: I started by just doing a straightforward chronological story and then it was my editor at Hodder's who said, "It can be a little bit flat to do it that way. Have you ever thought of doing it as flashback?" And I thought, "No, no, no, no, no! I can't do a complete rewrite." And I sat one night in a very quiet house and worked out a scheme as to how I'd do it. As I did it I realised that it really worked well because I could then explain why she was who she was without actually having to say it at all at the beginning. I could tell the story of where she'd come from, the background that she had, which wasn't a religious background at all, it wasn't Christian particularly.

I could explore what it was like for a woman to first want to be ordained a vicar when it wasn't even possible. How did she cope with that? And then when she could be, where did she go and how did the Church receive her? So there was a whole lot of stuff that would make her into the woman she was. And the people that she met - I know it's quite interesting, I could actually give her, for example, a very special relationship with the man who is her chaplain when she's bishop - but then you kind of know that at the very beginning they've not got on at all and he's really resented her, so you don't know until much later on in the book what it is that's happened between them that has brought about this close relationship. I love that because I'm one of these people who believes that any relationship that breaks down, you should be able to put it right. My experience in real life is that I have had relationships that I have not been able to mend, even with a lot of prayer and that breaks my heart. It was good for me to explore how something that had gone very wrong could then go very right by the grace of God and what do we have to do to make it right.

Doing this backwards and forwards thing suddenly became terribly important, because it gave people the chance to change and for you to see that change. And I love that. You know, sometimes we stick people in boxes and we go: "They're always like that and they've always been like that and they're never going to change" and actually we don't give them the freedom to change and so that was a great way of being able to do it.

Emily: Did you have to do a reasonable amount of research for the book as well? When it comes to choosing a new Archbishop, for example, was there an element where you had to find out what the process is, in order to then show that in the book?

Michele: Yes I did. I had to sit through General Synod, which is a trial for anybody. I mean oh my goodness it is dull and it can be very, very boring. I had to think, "Well what's that like?" I had to actually be there.

I also needed to have inside information and I found a wonderful person who was able to give me that information, who doesn't want to be named, but has been right at the top and knew about all the scheming that can go on and was also meticulous about detail, which was incredibly useful because he wouldn't let me get away with anything that wasn't accurate. He said to me, "If you're going to have a motion in Synod you can't say it like that; it's got to sound like this" and I am forever grateful to him and very sad that I can't name him and thank him. So, yes, a lot of stuff I lived through.

We were at theological college about 10 years before women were able to be ordained and I do remember all of that era, so I could write that up. I'd been thinking of this idea for about 20 years. I found in a file notes I'd had from going to see a friend of mine who'd been ordained and who sadly died in 1999 of multiple sclerosis, a very virulent form, and she was a wonderful vicar and she was one of the first. I found all these notes that I'd made of things that she said like: "When I was at theological college, I do remember one day looking down and seeing all the men in silly socks, and thinking, 'Who buys those socks for them?' and they'd got enormous great feet and I've only got little dainty feet. Is that kind of like a symbol of what it's going to be like for a woman in the Church?" She said, "We're going to have this big battle against the big feet"!

Emily: As we've already mentioned this was your first novel, so why for your first novel did you chose this specific area of women in leadership in the Church of England, where women aren't necessarily as of yet totally accepted?

Michele: I think the story came first. I'd had the story in my head for 20 years and always thought I couldn't write fiction, that I couldn't plot and that I would never be any good at it. Then a couple of years ago we moved down south. We'd been up in the north in Lancaster for 18 years and it was a very important move down to the south east. I had a year just getting to know people and then I knew I wanted to write again. And this thing hadn't gone away; it was at the back of my head.

It was a very loving church that we were in and I knew they would give me the freedom to do it, to write and not to expect me to have any role and that they would understand and that was very gracious of them. As I thought about it, it was this book that kept coming back and I thought if I don't write it now it's going to be too late! And if I don't give it a go, I'll never know. And surely if this is a God thing, then by his grace I will be able to do it.