Joanna Trollope OBE has been writing for more than 30 years - this is her 20th novel – and to this day she continues to write in longhand. 

She will be coming to Chorleywood next week to discuss her latest novel City of Friends, a story of love, friendship and identity.

While teaching English Joanna began writing “to fill the long spaces after the children had gone to bed,” and for many years combined her writing career with working as a teacher. 

By 1980, Joanna became a full-time author, she explains: “My first novel was written when I was 14, all about myself of course and it is now kept under lock and key in case my children find it.

I suppose I wrote it for the same reason that I still write – to communicate. I don’t think we should ever underestimate the power of story, it is how we negotiate with each other, how we build up relationships, how we learn. Nothing is so fascinating as good narrative – nobody of any age can resist.”

In City of Friends Stacey Grant loses her job and it feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she’d ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London?

As Stacey struggles to reconcile her old life with the new – she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between.

But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey’s redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits.

“I often write at an ordinary table – often in my kitchen and have not succumbed to the computer, so everything is handwritten,” Joanna explains. “I start with an emotional situation which grows into a story.  Then I choose a cast of characters, then I decide where they are going to live. 

“I will plot the first five or six chapters of a book quite minutely – and then I will plot the end so I know where I am going, but I do not know quite how I am going to get there which allows the book to develop organically – as life does.”

The Junction, Christ Church, Chorleywood, WD3 5SG, Tuesday, March 28, 7.30pm.