One day Jacqueline Winspear found herself stalled in traffic outside of a Tube station in London. As she waited for the traffic to begin moving again, she had a vision which seemed to unfold with cinematic precision.

Winspear imagined that a young woman was exiting the subway station. She was dressed in period garb from the 1920′s. Winspear transformed this daydream image into a series of literary fiction featuring a private investigator named Maisie Dobbs.

Winspear’s vision became the first scene in the first novel of the series. In this interview Winspear describes that initial moment of inspiration and how her character has been transformed over the course of numerous books. The latest one, A Lesson in Secrets, is set in 1932. Maisie has been asked to operate undercover disguised as a college professor. The threat of war is looming once again over Europe as the German National Socialist party, the Nazis, attract British sympathizers.

Listen to the podcast: local-national-963910

Or download it here.

This interview originally aired on WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs, Ohio. (www.wyso.org)

comments powered by Disqus