because when I was a teen I was torn between wishing I could fit in and not wanting to fit in. Looking back on it, it seems a ridiculous notion but at the time it felt very important.’
Talking to Brignull, it feels impossible that she could ever have felt outsiderish. She’s delightful company – charming, articulate and interesting – and seems to have led a brilliantly high achieving path, from a degree in English literature at Oxford, to script executive at the BBC and then head of development at Dogstar Films where she was the script editor on films that included Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, before turning to writing scripts herself. But as we chat about childhood it becomes clear that growing up with dual nationality was a significant point of difference for her.
‘My mum is very Greek, with a really thick accent and, in the 70s when I was growing up, England felt like quite a different place than now. We lived in a small village and she really did stand out from the crowd - sometimes I was mortifyingly embarrassed because she was so loud and exuberant. She’s absolutely fabulous but when you are quite a shy girl, being picked up from school by the loudest, most colourful mum is not always what you appreciate…’ Brugnall laughs. ‘I felt that when I went to Greece, I didn’t really fit in there either, but equally, when I was in the UK I always felt slightly different.’
Brignull grew up in Buckinghamshire in the Chilton Hills in a house hidden down a mile-long track surrounded by fields. Her English father, an advertising copywriter, “didn’t want to have any neighbours” and moved the family from Richmond to this rural idyll. “We really did roam free, in the most idyllic sense, and we had horses and ran around fields and when my mum wanted us back, she’d call across a valley to get us home for tea,” recalls Brignull.
She draws on and explores this deeply embedded sense of nature in the books, reflecting it in the witches’ relationship with the natural world. The coven live close to the earth, in every sense, in tune with the seasons. Their magic is not of the broomsticks and magic wands variety; it is more subtle and earthy than that, but no less powerful for it. They are wild – not least in the ‘yoking time’ when they venture into town for one-night stands with unsuspecting chaffs in the hope of pregnancy – and offer a glimpse of a society in which girls and women are not defined by their relationship with fathers, brothers, boyfriends and husbands. Yet, still they must conform to the coven’s own laws, and with conformity comes the possibility of rebellion, and of seeking a new way.
‘I love the idea that you can always find your people, however quirky or however outside the pack you might feel,’ Brignull concludes. “You can create your clan that’s not always necessarily the family that you come from or what people think or expect of you. Life is about forming those attachments and both books really are about learning to be there for other people.’
The Hawkweed Prophecy and The Hawkweed Legacy are published by Orchard Books in paperback at £7.99 each.
Michelle Pauli is a freelance writer and editor specialising in books and education. She created and edited the Guardian children’s books site.
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