Daisy Goodwin: Books That Changed My Life

I first read this when I was about seven and I was enthralled by the story of Sara Crewe’s descent into poverty and her subsequent resurrection. I would read the scene where she wakes up in her miserable garret to find that it has been transformed with a turkey carpet on the bare floor and a silver kettle singing by the fire, almost every night before I went to bed.

Sara has grown up with riches, but she only understands how lucky she has been when it has all been taken away and then magically restored. As a child who moved constantly between divorced parents, I found that part so comforting. I read it again recently and that scene still had the power to move me.

I never tire of reading Austen—there is always some new frisson to discover. Described by Austen as "handsome, clever and rich”, Emma is spoilt, bored and thinks she knows best, but she soon learns that life is not as straightforward as she imagines. I definitely had Emma in mind when I wrote my first novel The American Heiress / My Last Duchess. It is so much more interesting to write about a character with flaws, and so much easier if they are flaws that I might just happen to share.

The plotting is very clever; Emma thinks she know everything, but she totally misreads the relationship between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax which, when you reread the novel, is set out with all the narrative skill of a whodunnit. Austen is one of the few novelists who is as satisfying to read now as she was when I was a teenager. My only gripe is that pretty much everyone over the age of 40 in her novels is a grotesque, Lady Catherine de Burgh! Mr Wodehouse! Miss Bates! But as I am still mentally 21, I can forgive her.

I first came across these as a student, and I was astonished to find Victoria writing about Albert “looking so handsome in his tight white breeches with nothing underneath, and high boots.” She kept a diary from the age of 12 until her death, and they are a fascinating insight into the inner life of this remarkable woman.

I used them all the time when I was writing the TV series Victoria, it was the easiest way to find her “voice”. It was from reading the diaries that I understood the extent of Victoria’s teenage crush on her first Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. What is so interesting is how they change as she gets married. You can almost feel Albert’s breath as he reads what she has written over her shoulder. In the diaries he is always her “Dearest Angel”—there is no trace of the tempestuous quarrels that punctuated their married life. I have learnt to read historical documents as a novelist, always thinking about what the writer is not saying—it is the best way to bring the past to light. 

Diva by Daisy Goodwin (Head of Zeus, £20) is out now