Sarah Hardy

17th July 2025

This was the interview James Phillips, a big fan of Sarah Hardy’s The Walled Garden, had been waiting for since he’d first read the book. He hosted Sarah and it was a treat to hear their in-depth conversation. Sarah said that the book is about how a village called Oakbourne comes to terms with six years of a war that has fractured relationships. It was inspired by Sudborne Park, an area near Orford. There was a big gap where a large house used to stand. When she first knew the area it was empty except for muntjacs and hares. An area to ‘stir the imagination’. It had been taken over during the war and ‘evocative’ Nissen huts were still there. 

Sarah became interested in how ordinary people deal with awful trauma. This was partly sparked by an encounter at 7 years old with her grandfather who’d fought in the First World War. She asked the question, ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ and there was a look on her grandfather's face she’s never forgotten. Her ‘Aunt’ May had a photo of her only son, killed in the Second World War, on the mantelpiece in the front room and she used to sit in silence staring at it. Sarah’s husband later wrote When Daddy Came Home, which went against the accepted picture of the soldier returning with arms stretched wide to hug his family. One of the main characters of The Walled Garden, Stephen, is in constant pain, and lets everyone know it. James explored this character with Sarah and found that an early influence on her was Winifred Holtby’s South Riding. She'd picked this up in plain cover from her parents’ book club collection, without knowing anything about it. At first the characters seemed unsympathetic, but when she reread she thought it an extraordinary book.

James asked about Sarah’s use of different narrative points of view. Sarah said she’d wanted to put so much into the book, but publishers would only accept up to 100,000 words. As she revised her initial draft, Stephen’s story, and the question, ‘is he good or not?’, became the central motif. Nature and wild places come through in Sarah’s writing too. James mentioned the geese which throng the sky above Oakbourne, and Sarah smiled and said that she used to live on the Isle of Islay where at night the sky was full of geese. Sarah shares her love of walking with another of her characters, Alice. After a long reading which held the audience spellbound, James said it gave him goosebumps, which made me smile.

There was a discussion of Sarah’s writing process — it took her almost ten years to write this book — ‘I wish I was quicker’. Then the walled garden, and its message of resurrection and hope. And her research, ‘I would hate it if any historical facts were wrong’. When questions were opened to the audience she was asked more about this. No, she hadn’t used oral histories, but Akenfield was a significant influence. She had wanted to call her book ‘Peace Comes Dropping Slow’ after the line from ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by Yeats, but her agent suggested The Walled Garden as more commercial.  Sarah said she sees walled gardens as places of confession, of healing, but also as gardens of the imagination. 

Her second book has a different tone, being written in present tense. It will feature a minor character from the first book, and is titled Where the Alders Grow. I was left with a desire to read both books. And maybe there’ll be a third — a Suffolk trilogy. Having heard this rich discussion, I  hope so, and can’t wait to go to ‘Oakbourne’. 

Tricia Gilbey