Meet best-selling author Paula Hawkins
Are you sitting comfortably? Get lost in a book
Settling into the embrace of a comfy chair at a De Vere mansion house hotel with a good book is one of life’s purest pleasures. Our mansion house hotels are fitting places to get lost in a book, with an abundance of welcoming lounges, atmospheric bars and comfy snugs.
Located across the UK from Surrey to The Cotswolds, our hotels are set within country estates and parkland, where you can discover scenic lakes, sculptures, and breath-taking countryside views. Each hotel is on the doorstep of some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes offering stunning views for you to enjoy as you sit back and relax.
Choose from De Vere Latimer Estate, nestled in an Area of Outstanding Beauty, De Vere Cotswold Water Park, – surrounded by a nature reserve and beautiful lakes, De Vere Wokefield Estate which has an 18 hole championship golf course, De Vere Tortworth Court set within a 30 acre estate which includes a Victorian arboretum housing more than 300 plant and tree specimens, and De Vere Beaumont Estate located in Old Windsor within 44-acres of stunning grounds which includes natural ponds, manicured gardens and quirky sculptures.
We’re excited to be working with Penguin to celebrate the new book from number one bestselling author Paula Hawkins, A Slow Fire Burning. You can read a sample from the book here.
PAULA HAWKINS worked as a journalist for fifteen years before turning her hand to fiction. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989 and has lived there ever since. Her first thriller, The Girl on the Train, has been a global phenomenon, selling 23 million copies worldwide. Published in over forty languages, it has been a No.1 bestseller around the world and was a No.1 box office hit film starring Emily Blunt. Into the Water, her second stand-alone thriller, has also been a global No.1 bestseller, spending twenty weeks in the Sunday Times hardback fiction Top 10 bestseller list, and six weeks at No.1.
What is the best thing about seeing your book published?
It is a long, winding and often torturous route from idea to publication; there is usually a point during the writing of a novel when it seems a hopeless enterprise. So for me there is nothing quite so thrilling as spotting the book in the wild, seeing it held by a reader on the train (or plane or on a bench in the park), knowing that the words you sweated over and wept over have at last reached the page.
How do you select the names of your characters?
Quite often, they’re picked off my bookshelves… I’ll match the first name of one author with the surname of another. Occasionally – though not often – I have a very strong sense of what someone should be called, but quite often I’ll change a name halfway through writing the book, because the original no longer feels right to me.
Where is your favourite place to write?
At home, in my study. I’m not one of those people who likes to go to cafés or out to libraries. I like silence, and I like solitude! I have at times decamped to isolated cottages to write (in Northumberland, on Skye and in the Dolomites), but I think I’m most productive when I’m at home.
What does literary success look like to you?
I think most writers aspire to that hallowed sweet spot where bestseller status and critical acclaim collide. Very few achieve it, though.
What is your favourite chocolate?
Milk, occasionally adulterated by nuts. My chocolate tastes are not fancy.
What are you reading right now?
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones - an astonishingly accomplished and at times harrowing debut novel set in Barbados.
Whilst De Vere properties are impeccably connected by road, rail or air, our hotels are also surrounded by acres of green space, parkland, and beautiful countryside, so, if like Paula, you’re craving some quiet time, a stay at a De Vere hotel might just be for you.