Talking Location With author Cherry Radford – Beachy Head and Madrid

1st April 2018

#TalkingLocationWith... author Cherry Radford – Beachy Head (East Sussex) and Madrid, the settings for her novel The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter.

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter follows Imogen, borrowing her Aunt’s renovated lighthouse while recovering from the break-up of her marriage, and, thirty years earlier, her lighthouse keeper father on the nearby Beachy Head lighthouse – until he mysteriously drowned there in 1982.

I think it’s common to want to run away to the coast; there’s something energising about it, as if reaching the edge of the land makes you face up to things. But Beachy Head is no ordinary edge: towering 530 feet above the sea, it’s the highest of the series of chalk cliffs undulating between Seaford and Eastbourne in the South Downs National Park. It takes Imogen a while to get used to the ‘the earth dropping and swaying beneath her’. Many years ago, as a heart-broken twenty-something, I escaped to Beachy Head myself – not to go anywhere near the edge, but just to stand there like some French Lieutenant’s Woman and feel sorry for myself. After only about ten minutes I had to turn away.

The Seven Sisters undulating chalk cliffs, from Birling Gap. Photo: the author

I didn’t know then that the area has always been a renowned suicide spot. Although numbers have been much reduced by the Beachy Head Chaplaincy team patrolling the cliffs to help despondent people, about twenty to twenty-five poor souls each year still lose their lives here – some unintentionally (the chalk cliff edges are notoriously unstable). Although there’s an awareness of this sadness, and danger at the cliff inevitably finds its way into the story, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter mostly celebrates the invigorating beauty of the area, just as local people and a million or so visitors do each year.

Beachy Head, with the (now automated) lighthouse below. Photo: the author

One of the reasons I chose the Beachy Head area for Imogen’s coastal escape was because it has not one but two lighthouses. The squat little Belle Tout was built in 1832, but the cliff top was often so foggy that its light flashes couldn’t be seen from the sea. It was decommissioned in 1902, a few days before the new lighthouse in the sea below Beachy Head was ready to take over. The Belle Tout has passed through the hands of a number of private owners, including two physicians, so it didn’t seem unreasonable for Imogen’s aunt and physician uncle to have bought it. It’s now a beautiful little B&B, and it was wonderful to be able to stay in the original keeper’s bunk room that became Imogen’s in the story.

The Belle Tout, now a unique Bed &Breakfast Hotel. Photo: Rob Wassell

I never got to see inside the Beachy Head lighthouse, but I was lucky to be able to spend a magical afternoon with lighthouse expert Rob Wassell (author of The Story of… books about the two lighthouses and Birling Gap) on a boulder-strewn low-tide walk to it. As Imogen says, ‘from the cliff top, it was an endearing, little red and white striped ornament; on the beach it is shockingly tall, its colours majestic, a sad and mysterious presence.’ Like many lighthouses at the time it became automated in 1982, making the keepers – and their profession – redundant; this impending change, which must have been very distressing for many of them, is an important element in her father’s story.

Beachy Head lighthouse. Photo: artist Juan del Pozo

Beachy Head isn’t the only setting in the book. In particular, with the theme of communication, I wanted to include the viewpoint of Imogen’s Twitter friend Santi in Madrid. I deliberately chose his setting to be as contrasting as possible from hers; the land-locked capital city and the seaside cliff top initially make them feel like they might just as well be on different planets.

The ornate Gran Vía in Madrid, known as the Spanish Broadway

For someone with a fear of heights and a frequent dislike of capital cities, researching my two main settings for The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter could have been a challenge, but I surprised myself by quickly falling in love with both places. I still visit my friends in Madrid whenever I can, and particularly enjoy all the flamenco venues, the Sorolla Museum, the Retiro, Jardines de Sabatini and numerous other glorious parks. As for Beachy Head – well, I now live ten minutes from the lighthouse. (PHOTO 8)

Thank you so much to Cherry for such interesting insights into this part of England and the contrasting setting of Madrid.

You can follow Cherry on Twitter Facebook and via her website.

Book Review:

The first thing when opening the novel to note is that there is a specially compiled Spotify playlist to play along with the book. Songs are listed by chapter. One of the characters is a musician and it is music that essentially forges the connection between Imogen and Santi early on. There is Imogen in and around Beachy Head and Santiago Montoya in Madrid and it is one of his songs, playing in the car, that catches Imogen’s attention.

Beachy Head lighthouse at low tide, before re-painting of its stripes in 2013. The author is climbing the steps to the ‘set-off’. Photo: Rob Wassell.

Imogen reaches out to Santi on Social Media and the first faltering footsteps of exchange are made, each with a different mother tongue, each in their own way a lonely soul. There are smatterings of Spanish, which made it a great read for me as I am learning a little Spanish, little phrases and words are slipped in across throughout the text.

Imogen is living in a borrowed lighthouse, writing articles to make ends meet and is busy imagining the construct of a novel that she is just dying to write. She is also trawling through the secret diaries of her father, the eponymous lighthouse keeper of the title. He has left her a memoir to peruse, it seems history repeats and he was corresponding with a pen friend all those years ago, forging plans, detailing his life.

A novel of love, life and Twitter….. a story inspired by the author’s stranger-than-fiction friendship with a well-known flamenco guitarist in Madrid. The storyline hops around between the characters, mirroring the butterfly nature of Social Media, on to WhatsApp and the progression to Skype.

The book itself, in its physical form, is a delight. Each chapter opens with a light photographic image of the sea and coastline, with, of course, a lighthouse.

Tina for the Tripfiction Team

Do come and join team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)

Subscribe to future blog posts