‘It has a surprise ending – even my editor wasn’t expecting that’
She began her career at the age most people are thinking about retiring, but Val Wood ’s passion for writing shows no signs of abating, even as she approaches her 91st birthday. The novelist who is “loved by over three million readers”, according to the cover of her latest work, will be meeting and greeting a good number of those loyal fans in Hull later this month.
Val, of Beverley, will be signing copies of A Woman of Fortune at Waterstone’s in Jameson Street, from 3pm, on Thursday, November 20. Set in 1860s East Yorkshire, the female protagonist of the piece is “plucky” Lydia Mercer who seeks to establish her own independence after her marriage “scandalously distintegrates”.
Val said: “Victorian women had a really hard time. They had absolutely no rights at all, until the suffragettes came along, while their husbands could do or say anything they liked.
“She’s a completely new character, she just popped up,” said Val, who often talks about “living alongside” the people who end up populating her books. “It’s about her wanting equality.
“I won’t say a lot more about it, you can find out by reading the story, but I will say it has a surprise ending. Even my editor said ‘I wasn’t expecting that’.
“I enjoyed writing it very much. I like to close up a story – I don’t like leaving any questions – and that means there’s actually going to be another book.”
So, when she is writing dedications in copies of this, her 30th romantic historical novel, Val will already be part-way along with her next book for 2026. She started her professional writing career at the age of 60, after winning the first Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction, in 1994, and has been delivering a book a year ever since, much to the delight of her followers all over the world.
“I’ve had a brilliant 90th year,” she said. “I had a fantastic birthday, my family gathered here and we went for a lovely lunch at The Ivy in York, it’s such a brilliant place – if you go, you must visit the ladies’ loos upstairs!
“I’m also going to be a great-grandma in the new year. My grandson and his wife are expecting their first baby in February; it’s a little boy, I’m really looking forward to that.”
Val got away to Portugal and also to her beloved Jersey for a break. “We were at St Brelade’s Bay and our hotel overlooked the sea,” she said, adding that the place once featured in the TV series Bergerac.
“I have a brand new greenhouse which gives me so much pleasure. I only bought it this year but managed to grow some tomatoes during the summer and it is now full of brightly coloured geraniums.”
The Sunday Times best-seller says she never plots any of her books. “Something will just come into my head,” she said.
“With the book I’m just starting now, one of the characters is in A Woman of Fortune but I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. I just sit down and start writing.
“It’s all imaginative. I’m a novelist but first and foremost I’m a storyteller. I used to make up stories when I was young.”
The mum of two daughters, who counts Little Women among her favourite works by other authors, said one of her earliest memories was being in York with her mum and her middle sister, then a baby, crossing the road to her aunt and uncle’s house.
“War had just been declared and my father knew he’d be going away in the Army. My uncle carried my mother and my father carried the baby, we were going into the air-raid shelter; I would have been about five-and-a-bit.
“I also remember being in the air-raid shelter all night once. Someone must have seen a light and the air-raid warden came in and said ‘the all-clear went ages ago’.
“I clearly remember sitting on one of the two beds in there. I don’t remember being scared – I didn’t understand what was happening really – it was dark and it was exciting.”
Born in Castleford, Val came to Hull when she was aged 12 or 13, with her father then working as a war damage surveyor. “We lived in Beverley Road, then Spring Bank West.
“I liked Hull as soon as we came. It was bigger than Castleford and there was seemingly a cinema on every road, when there was only one in Castleford.”
After Val married her late husband Peter, to whom she dedicates her latest book “as always”, along with her family, the couple moved into Holderness and spent time in Leven, Sproatley – “I fell in love with that place” – and Burton Pidsea. “I always wanted a cottage in the country,” Val said, although she has been happily installed in Beverley for a number of years.
Looking ahead to Christmas, Val said the celebrations would be centred around home. “I always have a tree and I think it will be a real one this year.
“I also like to go to the carols in St Mary’s in Beverley. It’s a lovely choir.”