“It’s uncanny – the thought and feeling that someone, in a sense, wouldn’t be identifiable or remembered without this piece of writing. That was a starting point for me. My mother was an amazing person and if I didn’t write about her, well, people wouldn’t even know she had existed!”

Nicholas Royle talks to Samantha Harrold about writing Mother: A Memoir in this richly detailed Q&A – read in full here.