Newcastle teacher's Elizabethan thriller
Another classroom-inspired page-turner from Naomi Kelsey
It’s a question asked of many a newly published author: “When are you going to give up the day job?”
But in Naomi Kelsey’s case it hardly seems appropriate since the day job has provided the spark for both her novels – her 2023 debut, The Burnings, and her second which is published this month.
Naomi teaches English at Gosforth Academy where, she says, her achievements have elicited various responses.
“Miss, you’re next to Margaret Atwood,” reported one pupil excitedly.
Another, looking dubiously at the thickness of her not over-long first novel, asked: “Didn’t you get bored?”
You’ll find no evidence of authorial boredom in The Burnings, a gripping read which fulfilled the promise recognised by New Writing North who had supported her over the years with two Northern Writers’ Awards.
Naomi said the idea for that book, a historical novel about notorious 16th Century witchcraft trials in North Berwick, came from a lesson she was preparing about Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and particularly her research into the three witches.
And now, in fulfilment of a two-book deal with Harper North, comes another historical page-turner at least partially inspired by school.
In The Darkening Globe, a thriller set in the reign of Elizabeth I, the masculine world of maritime ‘exploration’ – often veering into what we might now call piracy - is viewed through the eyes of the wife left behind.
It’s the autumn of 1597 and we meet the resourceful Beatrice (née Gardiner, merchant’s daughter) about to be reunited with her husband, Sir Hugh Radclyffe, back from his New World adventuring aboard the Silver Swan.
Beside the Thames she waits with their two children, eager to see what treasures their father might bring, and her steward, Ridley, who makes “the skin on the nape of her neck prickle”.
And suddenly he’s on the gangplank, Sir Hugh in the sartorial finery befitting a heroic figure.
Naomi attributes The Darkening Globe to “a combination of various things coming together at once”.
“I’d been thinking of writing something about Bess Throckmorton, who became the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh (a favourite of the Queen), but didn’t really know what to do with her.
“I was interested in the idea of an explorer’s wife. What did she get up to when he was exploring far-flung places?
“I imagined she would have been responsible for keeping family and household together and possibly enjoying it.”
But the story of Sir Walter and even Bess, famously cold-shouldered by Elizabeth I, has been told in the history books, so Naomi opted for the freedom afforded by inventing her main characters and placing them in a historical context.
So we have Beatrice offering a wifely welcome to her returning husband while putting aside a troubling secret and suppressing her niggling resentment at having to relinquish command.
And we have an intriguing twist. For following Sir Hugh down the gangplank is an eye-catching woman in an expensive gown.
“She’ll be staying with us now,” an astounded Beatrice is told as her husband takes the stranger’s hand.
Who is she? And what of the extraordinary globe that her husband, not wishing to be outdone by rivals such as Sir Walter, buys at great expense from master craftsman Emery Molyneux?
Unveiled at court in the presence of the Queen, this contraption, larger than any crafted to date, enters Beatrice’s home, further unsettling her with its apparently malign influence.
Naomi Kelsey has the storyteller’s gift of making you want to know the answers to those questions and of seamlessly blending fact and fiction.
Her invented characters move easily among historical figures such as the Raleighs, the earls and countesses of Essex and Northumberland, and indeed Molyneux, maker of the first celestial and terrestrial globes in England, who died in 1598.
And if you think the picture she paints of Tudor London bears comparison to that of the late CJ Sansom, author of the popular Matthew Shardlake novels, you wouldn’t be alone.
What a terrific film The Darkening Globe would make, a suspenseful thriller full of dark intrigue and with supernatural overtones. Can the globe really predict or even cause the death and ill fortune described?
Cheerfully, Naomi thinks back to school lessons in the immediate aftermath of the Covid lockdowns.
“You had to teach in a sort of box at the front of the classroom because you had to be two metres from the kids.
“Normally you’d wander around but you had to set a task and just stay at the front.”
On social media Naomi had seen museum curators vying to upstage each other with items from their collections, a way of engaging audiences while doors remained closed.
“One day they were posting creepy objects and I thought that would be fun to set for a creative writing exercise, although I asked the kids to write about objects that weren’t just creepy but haunted.”
She had a go herself, finding on a National Trust website an account of the country’s first terrestrial globe at Petworth House in Sussex. Made by Emery Molyneux, it is believed to have been owned by Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland.
“Elizabethan globes weren’t like our modern maps,” says Naomi.
“They had pictures of mermaids or sea monsters to fill in the gaps of what they didn’t know. I thought that globe was such a fascinating object and also quite spooky.”
The book was written and actually just about finished when The Burnings was going to print. And like the first, it was written in the “pockets of time” Naomi finds between teaching and bringing up young children, now aged six and three.
She talks of an early school finish on a Friday, allowing some time to write, and another brief window of opportunity during her daughter’s gymnastics. This is one disciplined writer.
Born in Milton Keynes, Naomi graduated from the University of York and moved to the North East in 2009.
“I think I’ve always written,” she says. “It’s just something I’ve always liked to do and I’ve always managed to do it around other activities.”
Now, she hopes her achievements are rubbing off on her pupils.
“I think there’s a growing sense that you can be a published author from the North and that’s great for young people. Some of the kids I’ve taught have written things in their own time.
“They say that if you can see it, you can be it.”
One who has proved that maxim is Newcastle fantasy writer Grace Curtis, who Naomi once taught and whose third novel, Idolfire, was published in March by Hodder & Stoughton.
Meanwhile, Naomi’s well into her own third novel, inspired by a female character in one of Shakespeare’s tragedies (watch this space).
The Darkening Globe (published by Harper North) is out on April 24 but there’s a launch event at The Bound, Whitley Bay, on April 23 and Naomi will be at Waterstones, Newcastle, on April 27, Collected Books in Durham on April 30 and Hexham Book Festival on May 3.