13th June 2025


Focus


Author Profile


Sarah Hall


The award-winning author on the mischievous protagonist of her new novel, Helm - a Cumbrian wind whose days could be numbered. Lauren Brown reports


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Imprint Faber Publication 28th August 2025 Format Main edition HB (9780571383559, £20); indies exclusive edition HB (9780571397310, £20); export trade PB (9780571383566, £14.99); EB (9780571383573, £9.99) Rights sold UK Commonwealth and EU, excluding Canada Editor Alex Bowler Agent Tracy Bohan, The Wylie Agency


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elm (Faber), the latest, wondrous novel by two-time Booker nominee Sarah Hall has been in the works for 20 years; a mere blink of an eye for its ancient,


playful, hilarious, destructive and – potentially – dying main character, Helm “helmself”. Hall is from the Eden Valley in Cumbria,


where the novel is set, and grew up with Helm, the only named wind in the UK, described by the Met Office (who were “great” in helping Hall in her research for the book) as “a strong north-easterly wind hitting the south-west slopes of Cross Fell in Cumbria”. When the wind blows, a heavy bank


of cloud rests along or just above the Cross Fell range, the Met Office description continues; “a slender, nearly stationary roll of whirling cloud (the ‘helm bar’), parallel with the ‘helm’, appears above a point one to 6km (up to three miles) from the foot of the fell”. Hall would frequently see these clouds


as a child, she tells me when we talk over Zoom. “The little hill next to my parents’ house, you’ve got a straight shot looking over to Cross Fell, so you could see the two clouds,


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Author Profile


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