Frank Cottrell Boyce’s inspiration for the Our Read book

With only ten days to go until the launch of Our Read, in an interview with Catherine Jones in the Liverpool Echo today, Frank Cottrell Boyce talks about what inspired him to write The Unforgotten Coat for Our Read, and how a train journey with Jane Davis sparked the whole thing off:

This time, the idea came to him as he and Jane chatted on a train to London to meet the publishers Walker Books a year ago.

“I have this notebook which is my ideas notebook, and I had three or four really good, what I thought were really good ideas for stories,” says Frank.

“And on the way down to London on the train, for some reason I just started talking about this girl, Misheel, who’s a real girl.

“Jane said, ‘that’s the story I want in the book’. And I went well, it’s not actually a story, it’s just something that happened. I’ve got these other really great stories that I’ve worked out.

“But she said ‘no no, that’s the one’.”

Read it in full here.

Here is a photo of Frank, with Fiona McDonald from Walker Books, just after the contracts were signed for Our Read: