‘It was several years ago that I first began to develop a fascination with memories of 1976, when I started writing in earnest, having given up my career to study English and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Images and senses of summer seemed to play a strong role in my writing – the heatbaked scent of drying lawns, the rise and fall of honeysuckle and the slip-slap of flip-flops on boiled asphalt – and my recollections were repeatedly drawn back to that heatwave summer, when I was turning six.’

Isabel talks to Retreat West about the creation of Summer of ’76 and her writing processes.