Book Club Meets: First loves and sliding doors, with Clare Leslie Hall

If you had a second chance at your first big love, would you take it? What about if you were already married to a very different kind of person? This is the dilemma Beth is faced with in Broken Country, the Happy Place Book Club novel for March. In this chat Fearne and author Clare Leslie Hall talk about why first love can be so intoxicating, and why it’s only human to feel the pull between very different lifestyles, knowing there are multiple ways you could be happy... Clare explains that Broken Country used to be a very different book, and she almost abandoned it entirely, so what can we learn about being patient with our creative blocks? Plus, if you ever fancy going to Dorset – where the book is set - Fearne and Clare go off on a tangent about all the best places to visit... Thank you to John Murray Press for the use of Broken Country audiobook, narrated by Hattie Morahan. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Listen to Book Club Meets: Holly Bourne https://pod.fo/e/2b5d15 Listen to Book Club Meets: David Larbi https://pod.fo/e/2a9766 Listen to Book Club Meets: Dame Harriet Walter https://pod.fo/e/298eb6 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To market, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Gabriel Wolf is back living in Meadowlands. Frank says:

• 0:32Fearne Cotton?

  Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Divorced now? Just him and his boy rattling around in that huge place.

• 0:41Fearne Cotton?

  Today, Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  He gets up from his side of the table and walks round to mine, takes my face in his hands, kisses me. "We won't let that pillow cause us any grief. We'll have nothing to do with him." "Who told you?" "It was the talk of the pub last night." "Took two huge great lorries to bring all their stuff from London, apparently." "Gabriel hated it here. Why would he come back?" His name feels strange on my tongue, the first time I've spoken it aloud in years. "There's no one else to look after the place. His father long gone, his mother at the other side of the world, up to her neck in dingo shit with any luck." Frank always manages to make me laugh.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  "What's there for him, anyway?" Frank says casually. But I see it, the unsaid thought that flits across his mind. "Aside from you." "He's bound to sell up and move to Las Vegas, or Monte Carlo, or wherever it is these..." He grapples for the word, looks pleased with himself when he finds it. "Celebrities hang out."

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Frank spends all the daylight hours and a fair few at night time out on the farm, caring for our animals and tending the land. He works harder than anyone I know, but always takes time to notice the beauty of a spring sunset or the sudden dizzying soar of a skylark, his attunement to weather and wildlife set deep in his bones. One of many things I love about him. Frank doesn't have time to read novels or go to the theatre. He wouldn't know a dry martini if someone chucked one in his face. He's the very antithesis of Gabriel Wolf, or at least the one we read about in the papers.

• 2:34Fearne Cotton?

  Okay, let me tell you a little bit about this book. Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel, and over an intense summer, he made her think and feel differently. Understandably, she thought it was the start of her great love story, but then Gabriel left and it was Frank who picked up the pieces. So what's going to happen when Gabriel comes back? Everything Beth thinks she knows about who she is is about to crumble. Is this, I wonder, a possibility for a second chance at first love? There's a real heart-wrenching pull of these different men and these different lifestyles Beth could choose to lead in this story. And she could be happy in both lives. I think we can all imagine that, really.

• 3:17Fearne Cotton?

  Right, as ever, my favourite part of being in this Happy Place Book Club with you is hearing what you made of the book. What stood out for you and how it made you feel? Joanne left a comment on Instagram saying, "I couldn't put it down. The story is beautiful and sad and really draws you in. Loved it." And Emmy, oh my gosh, you say, "I've just finished it and I'm broken. I gave myself a headache from crying so much." And here's Nicola.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall is a grown-up love story with so many different layers to it. It is a wonderfully touching story of love and how we can love different people so, so differently. Every single emotion was felt whilst reading this book, ones that I didn't even know I had. It has everything that you have ever wanted from a book. And I have to say, I didn't take a breath whilst I was reading it. It had me in a chokehold. And as soon as I'd finished reading it, I wanted to start it again. If you're listening now and you've not read it, just pick it up. It is amazing and it deserves all the hype that it's received.

• 4:20Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I love that Nicola. This book made you feel every single emotion. Me too, that is so perfect. I'm so glad that you loved it. And I love chatting to Claire, especially about that real intoxication of first love and our shared love of Dorset. I love Dorset. She also told me Broken Country used to be a very different book and she almost abandoned it entirely. So you can find out why she chose to be patient and came back to the story. There are some good lessons in there about the value of pausing and not pushing your creativity if it's not coming to you.

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• 5:08Speaker 05

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• 6:29Fearne Cotton?

  Right, here we go. This is the show.

• 6:53Fearne Cotton?

  Hello Claire.

• 6:54Speaker 06

  Hi Fern, it's very nice to see you.

• 6:56Fearne Cotton?

  So good to see you and congrats on this amazing book Broken Country, which is our Happy Place Book Club pick for March. We've all absolutely bloody loved reading it. What an absolute joy of a book it is. And it's set in Dorset, my favourite county where you live.

• 7:12Speaker 06

  Yay, I didn't know it was your favourite county. Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful here and it's sunny as well, so that helps.

• 7:19Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's just the best. Dorset is such a funny one because people just drive through it to get to Devon and Cornwall. But it's the best, it's got the best beaches. What's your favourite beach in Dorset?

• 7:29Speaker 06

  Um, I really like West Bay near Bridport, it's gorgeous.

• 7:33Fearne Cotton?

  I love West Bay.

• 7:34Speaker 06

  It's just so beautiful. We, I always think of that as like the fashionable bit of Dorset. And then we're in the sort of farming country, but it's really pretty as well.

• 7:43Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's just all gorgeous. I love a bit of Durdle Door.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  I love a bit of Durdle Door, yeah.

• 7:48Fearne Cotton?

  I love Studland.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  So beautiful, they are amazing beaches.

• 7:54Fearne Cotton?

  They're amazing beaches, Shell Bay, it's all so beautiful. And I mean, I'm going off on a Dorset tangent now, but if you love West Bay, there's a great cafe I'm sure you've been to in Bridport called Soulshine. I adore it.

• 8:06Speaker 06

  Best coffee and the best cakes.

• 8:08Fearne Cotton?

  The best cakes ever. And they do this sort of charred broccoli thing. Oh my God, I could eat there every day.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's incredible.

• 8:16Fearne Cotton?

  It's too good. So it's a Dorset love affair. Obviously you live in Dorset. Was it, was it just sort of a given that you would write a book, this book, based in Dorset? I guess you kind of, you want to write a place you know intimately, that you know the smells of, you can see the colours of. Did that just feel like the most natural thing to, to set the book there?

• 8:34Speaker 06

  I think it did, but I have written another book while I was here and it, you know, it wasn't inspired by the landscape. I think it's because the story came literally from this kind of thunderbolt moment when my husband was out running. We're in, we live in a farmhouse surrounded by farmland. And my husband was out running with our youngest son's puppy and it was lambing season. And the farmer threatened to shoot him. So it was this kind of, it didn't happen. Thank goodness. Moment of horror.

• 9:03Fearne Cotton?

  Oh god.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  And suddenly, weirdly, for a moment of horror, I saw this love triangle. I could sort of sense this big push and pull that was the farmer and his wife and there was a boy running towards them. And behind the boy was the woman's first love. And so that popped into my head. And so it really was a farming story and I needed to kind of get to know the landscape around me, even though I'd sort of lived here for, well, now seventeen years. You know, I walked the dog every day in these incredible fields. So I know it very, very well, but it was actually the act of going out with the farmers and finding out what it meant to be a farmer that really brought the setting alive to me. And now when I,

• 9:47Speaker 06

  when I think of every single scene in the book, I can see it like a film because it, because it's my landscape, it's where I live.

• 9:53Fearne Cotton?

  I am so obsessed by these thunderbolt moments. And you know, you hear it with writers, with songwriters, you know, I spent a large portion of my career interviewing musicians who had this exact thing where, you know, you, you, it could be you're lying in bed or it could be you're doing something quite mundane, or maybe something visual really inspires this moment where an idea is almost fully formed or certainly feels more formed than it should be for the small amount of time it took to arrive in your head. What was that like having that? That moment, that idea come to you?

• 10:25Speaker 06

  I mean, it was incredible. And I can tell you that I'm walking the fields, looking for a new thunderbolt and it isn't coming. It was a real one off. Um, I think it was part this thing. I was in the middle of a book too, and it was really, I was struggling and you know, the shiny new idea thing. And John came back and had from this moment of horror and like ping, this idea just arrived, literally within ten minutes of talking about it. I was like, oh my God, I've got this amazing love triangle. I've got to write it. But of course, inevitably, the writing of it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. And it was four years, you know, I gave it up twice. I kept going back because Frank, Beth and Gabriel were just so in my heart. Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  The thunderbolt moment was amazing, but then it still took me four years and 20 drafts, or whatever it is.

• 11:13Fearne Cotton?

  It's such a fragile process, the whole thing, writing. You know, you can give up, you can walk away, and it's such a terrifying thought. I mean, I'm on my second fiction at the moment. I'm 48K in, and I've just pressed paused on that because I've had an idea for a non-fiction, and I'm quite easily distracted, and I feel quite urgent about it. So I've now started this non-fiction, but I am borderline terrified that I won't go back to this fiction, and I've got 48,000 words just sat there that I could just abandon. It's such a fragile, strange process, and you're the only person that can really motivate yourself to keep at it.

• 11:56Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, when you had those moments where you gave up and you were like, sod this, I can't deal with this anymore, I mean, it's gut-wrenching. What did you feel like, imagining that you might walk away from that story?

• 12:07Speaker 06

  Exactly that. I hope this might give you some hope in your 48,000-word thing, because...

• 12:15Fearne Cotton?

  Please tell me.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  I was advised by a couple of publishing professionals to stop writing the book. It wasn't landing, and so I did, but I was heartbroken. And it was actually a girlfriend of mine, we were driving back from Bath one night, and she said, "I just don't know what you're playing at. You love those characters, why have you stopped writing it?" And it was her, and I went, the next day I went back to Broken Country, and I never looked back. But what I do think, that massive gap, well, it wasn't massive, but it might have been two months, that massive gap made me see it with fresh eyes, and it became the book it needed to be. So, for example, Broken Country used to have the male voices as well. It had Frank's voice and Gabriel's voice, and also that gave me insight into who they were.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  It was a woman's story, you know, it's a story of a woman who's torn between two men and two lifestyles. And also, I realised it should be a period novel, and I just think those things, and I also decided to include a murder child, all those things made Broken Country what it ended up. Being and I don't think it would have happened without the gap. So I think actually as a writer, the biggest challenge in a way is to stop sometimes. And to take a break because when things aren't working, my tendency is to just sort of bludgeon my way through it. And I think if I sit at my desk for 12 hours, it'll work, but it doesn't. You have to actually have the courage to stop for a bit, I think.

• 13:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and patience, which none of us are good at. I mean, I'm so impatient. If I've had the idea, I want it written yesterday. It's like, it's not a quick process. It's so bloody long. And that, you know, thank God for your mate cheerleading you on because, I mean, imagine if you hadn't finished this book. Not only is it given so many of us readers just such beautiful escapism, but also this book has blown up. I mean, everywhere. I mean, it's like, it's kicking off in the States. The noise around this book is wild. How are you processing all of that?

• 14:14Speaker 06

  Honestly, fun. I mean, you are talking to a lifelong compulsive daydreamer. And I never expected any of my daydreams to come in, let alone most of them. So it's been absolutely nuts and just so, I mean, just such a thrilling, thrilling thing to have. Because the best thing, you know what it's like when you get rid of, when you, I say get rid of, but when you finish finally hand over your last edit. You kind of lose your characters and it's a bit like a mourning period, isn't it?

• 14:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 06

  And what I love about all of this is just the readers and people get in touch with me and telling me what they think about the characters. Oh, you know, oh, it's, it's been so wonderful. It's been such a big thrill. It really has.

• 14:57Fearne Cotton?

  So amazing. I mean, just to pick up on what you were sort of talking about a minute ago as well. And you speaking through Beth and her experience of this, I thought it was so beautifully done because. There's this love triangle, as you've mentioned for anyone that's not read the book yet. And you feel so much empathy and compassion for Beth, which, you know, when we talk about people, I don't know, say you've got her with Frank, her husband, and then she's obviously hugely distracted by Gabriel, her first love coming back into her life. It could be so easy to paint her as somebody that is, you know, easy to dislike and for us to sit there as readers feeling judgmental, but you just don't.

• 15:36Fearne Cotton?

  You completely understand how she's torn and, and the pull of both men and why she feels so strongly about both of them. Did you find that a tricky line to tread?

• 15:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I did. I'm so glad that you felt like that. Because I think it would be very easy to dislike Beth because she's a woman who's torn between two men and she's married to a very good guy and she's very happily married. But she's wildly attracted to her first love. And, you know, for her to cross over the line and to have an affair with Gabriel is going to make her a very, very unlikable character. So I worked very hard on kind of trying to make the way that the reveals came. I hope that the reader will understand, no one's excusing her behaviour. But I hope it's understandable because of what happens to her. Because Beth and Gabriel both want the same thing at the beginning of the novel.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  They both want to go to Oxford University. They're both very clever and they both love writing. But her life gets knocked off course very easily because she's a sort of working class girl of the 1950s, a country girl. Whereas his, you know, he's born into great wealth and entitlement. It just goes exactly to plan. But Beth, I love Beth because I think she's, she does make some, she's got, she's very flawed. She makes some big mistakes. But she's a survivor and what I really like about her is her life, her university aspirations get knocked off course. But instead she marries a farmer and she falls in love with the landscape. And that life she carves out for herself is just as rewarding as the one she'd always dreamed of. And so I, I, I hope that.

• 17:16Speaker 06

  Readers will sort of root for Beth because I think she follows the path that she ends up being much, much more rewarding than the one she set out to follow.

• 17:25Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And also it just shows how love and life is messy and complicated and nuanced. And I just thought you completely nailed that. And it was just lovely to be on that tumultuous journey with Beth and going through it all. You know, it was just, it was exciting. It's exhausting at times. It's just, it was so brilliant. And, and why did you, why did you feel so strongly about introducing that notion of first love? Because it is obviously such a tantalizing moment in your life when you're a young person, that you have that first huge love. What, what felt so compelling to you to, to include a first love in the story?

• 18:03Speaker 06

  I think that I love to write about big, powerful emotion. And I think when I'm starting a novel, there's got to be something in my heart that's pulling me into the story more than a plot. It's got to be a feeling. And with Beth, it was this feeling of yearning. And I think I kind of like the idea of creating these characters who had this big what if locked inside them. It had gone wrong, but they'd never got over each other. And I wanted to put them on the crossroads. And there's a second chance. They could go back. And I really wanted to look at, can you go back? You know, what if you, is it possible to go back? Because haven't you changed so much in the intervening years as a person? Is it

• 18:46Speaker 06

  really possible? And I do think that that first love is, it's just so much bigger than anything else, the first time you fall in love. And that's what I really wanted to capture. And I know my daughter won't mind me saying this because we've spoken about it. But I remember, you know, obviously I'd been in the same relationship for 29 years. So my first love is just a very distant memory. But I remember seeing Maya, who's 23, going through her, the first big relationship and how enormous it seemed, how all consuming. And then when they broke up, how devastating. And actually, as her mother, I think I felt just as devastated. But it made, it reminded me that it's the same, the years pass, but

• 19:29Speaker 06

  first time love is different. It's, it's very special and unique. And it, and it feels much, much bigger than any other sort of emotion, I think.

• 19:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it's so beautiful. I just, I mean, I'm a big old romantic, so I just loved that whole storyline. I was just sucked in and just like flicking the pages as quickly as possible, just lapping it all up and absolutely loving it. It's so beautiful.

• 19:52Speaker 06

  Oh, I love that.

• 19:53Fearne Cotton?

  And then, as you mentioned a moment ago, there is the, uh, the court case towards the end of the book. I don't wanna do any spoilers for people that haven't read it, but what I found really interesting was hearing you speak recently about doing some research at the Old Bailey. You went down there, what, for a week?

• 20:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yes. It was incredible. So the book took four years and I, about two years in, I remember saying to my partner, if I could include a murder trial, I think it would take this book in a whole new direction. But I'd never written courtroom drama or even really read very much, apart from To Kill a Mockingbird, which I love. And so I went to the Old Bailey and honestly, it was fascinating. Have you ever been?

• 20:30Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 20:31Speaker 06

  You can sit, you should go, you can sit in the public gallery, you can choose. There are sort of like ten trials going on and most of them are open and you just queue up and you go in and, um, you can't take notes or anything. And you look down on the court and it's just, there's so much sort of pomp and the sort of, it's spectacle and you've got the judge and the barrister, what I found so fascinating. I went to watch this guy who, it was a murder slash manslaughter trial, which is exactly what I had in the book. And it was a young guy who basically got drunk and had thought mistakenly that a man walking towards him had stolen his friend's phone, so he punched him and the, and the guy died.

• 21:11Speaker 06

  So it was like a horrible case and, but what was incredible, I was, get so wound up by the case because you'd, I'd be, you'd see the prosecution, I'd think, right, this is just, you know, this guy's definitely guilty. And then you'd hear the defence and you feel so utterly devastated for him. So that made me think, there's so much a powerful emotion in a trial and that's why I came home and wrote my own version of it. And I think it was a really, I'm really, really glad I did. I'm probably the proudest of that because it was the hardest for me to write, but I think it really helped to ramp up the suspense.

• 21:46Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, yeah. And I mean, there's all sorts of twists and turns that, again, I don't Want to give away at the end where I was genuinely shocked like, what? What's, what's happening here? It was just the perfect way to wrap everything up and just, it was just fucking genius, quite frankly. Where do you write, Claire? Where's your spot? Do you have a certain place in your house that you like to sit down and get, get those creative juices flowing?

• 22:09Speaker 06

  I'm in it right now and it used to be, it's a tiny little room that was big enough to hold a cot. So my youngest was in here for a couple of years. And yeah, and it's my office and I've tried working everywhere. I saw, I've tried cafes. I shared an office with some writer friends, which was fantastic because we just gossiped and laughed all day. But I didn't get anything done.

• 22:32Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 22:32Speaker 06

  I'm here, I'm just in here.

• 22:34Fearne Cotton?

  I can't write in cafes. Like I always admire, when I see friends of mine who are like, just writing my new book in this cute cafe. I am so distracted by everything. I have to sit in complete silence on my own. No one else can be in the house. I usually, I like to get up really early and write before the kids wake up. That seems to really suit me, where I'm not overthinking. I'm just kind of in that nice state of, am I awake? Am I not? Everything's a bit more fluid. But yeah, to write in a cafe, I just, I couldn't do it. There's no way.

• 23:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree. The early morning, I mean, I'm not waking up early enough at the moment, which is a good thing. But the early morning writing session is the best. And there's something so romantic and so insular in the right way about you've got a cup of tea and it's just you and the house is asleep. I love that feeling.

• 23:22Fearne Cotton?

  Just me and the cats, they're usually trying to walk over my laptop and sort of slightly annoying me. I mean, this is definitely a book that, I mean, I'm sure it already has, but is going to change your life so hugely. That must just feel amazing because obviously writing a book and especially fiction is such a strange process. You know, you're quite literally inventing a whole world and these characters from thin air, like from absolutely nothing, to become something that loads of other people not only believe in, but feel deeply connected to in their own personal way. There's such gorgeous alchemy with this process and for you to have done that. To this degree where people are just losing their minds about this book and it's

• 24:06Fearne Cotton?

  just travelling so far. It must feel like your life's being turned upside down slightly.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, obviously in the best possible way.

• 24:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 06

  But, you know, obviously I'm thrilled, but it does a bit and it's, you know what it's like. When you're writing a novel, you write in a vacuum, don't you? And, you know, you might, you might show a friend or you might show your agent, your partner, whatever, but really it's just you and the story and the characters. And it's hard, it's so, so hard to keep yourself going without having anybody else's input. And, you know, this was four years. So, and it was just me and I knew that my agent loved it. That was brilliant. Then I knew that the foreign rights agent loved it and that was brilliant. But when we went out on submission, I had absolutely no idea what other people would think. And it was completely terrifying.

• 25:00Speaker 06

  And so just to have the validation, of course, but really the connection with the story and everything that people say to me about the characters, it's amazing. It really is amazing. So it's just been the biggest thrill.

• 25:14Fearne Cotton?

  Who's your favourite character in the book? Is it hard, is it too hard to choose?

• 25:19Speaker 06

  It's quite hard. I mean, I loved writing Bath and I care deeply about Bath, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to say Frank because Frank was the guy that, when I was advised to give this book up a couple of times, I couldn't because of him. And Frank, there's about, I mean, obviously no spoilers, but I'd say there are three scenes. If you saw the first draft and the 20th draft, go, wow, different book, contemporary, very different. But there are about three scenes, I think Frank's in all of them, that always came across. And I needed to know Frank's ending, so I'm gonna go with Frank.

• 25:57Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, Frank is, for so many reasons, a very special man and It's just amazing, sort of, when you're reading the book, all of those layers getting peeled back further and further to you to sort of really understand what kind of person he is and what motivates him is, is really wonderful. So I'm, I'm not surprised at all. I'm sure it was pretty fun writing characters like Gabriel's mum. It's always fun to write a mean character.

• 26:23Speaker 06

  So fun. Um, yeah, I absolutely loved writing her. I had to sort of, if anything, I had to pull her back a bit so that she wasn't too much of a sort of pantomime baddie. But, um, she's a snob, but I, in my head, I, she needed to have motivation for behaving so appallingly. Um, and so I knew a lot more of her backstory than I shared in the novel. So the, just, she just about had motivation to behave as she does. But yeah, she is, somebody pointed this out to me, I'm not very good at realising these things, but someone said, oh, you chose her as your antagonist. And I'm like, oh, oh, yes, oh, I did. Anyway, I guess she is the antagonist.

• 27:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And I think we've probably all encountered someone like that, especially, you know, when you're young and, and you don't feel like you've got perhaps the confidence to stand up to somebody who's, you know, extremely vocal about their opinions. It's, um, it was brilliant, sort of seeing how Beth interacted with her and, and actually how much of the story ends up sort of being informed by her as well. It was, um, yeah, I liked her character a lot in this, you know, just, it's just good to have a great baddie in there, isn't it, in the mix? It's just so fun.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  A hundred percent. Yes, absolutely.

• 27:35Fearne Cotton?

  So much fun. Um, well, I, I'm so thrilled that we've all been able to read Broken Country for the Happy Place Book Club. It's just been so fun and everybody's just been loving reading it along with us and commenting on it and getting stuck into talking about the characters and the plot and the twists at the end. Um, thank you for writing a book that I just adored reading. And not that you need any luck whatsoever, but all the love for whatever comes next with the, with the unfurling of this amazing story.

• 28:07Speaker 06

  Oh, thank you so much. And thank you so much for choosing Broken Country to be the March pick. It's really meant the world to me.

• 28:15Fearne Cotton?

  Oh Claire, thank you so much, you utter legend, you utter genius. Thank you for being our Happy Place Book Club pick for March. Now, what are we reading together in April, I hear you cry? Well, it's called Bear, and it's by Lorna Tucker. Have you started reading this one yet? It's a completely vital and agonising true story about Lorna's fight to survive living on the streets of London. She had to lie, steal, strip, and just about everything in between. As I say, it's a painful read at times, but it's a really important portrait of female homelessness. So I really hope you'll be reading along with us. Let me know if you are on Instagram, we're at Happy Place Book Club. For now, a massive thanks to Claire, to the producer, Anushka Tate, at Happy Place Studios,

• 29:00Fearne Cotton?

  and to you, you're surrounded by big love.

• 29:31Speaker 05

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• 30:16Speaker 05

  This week on Help, I sexed my boss. And after taking a shower, I used some spray deodorant that belonged to his mother from the cupboard. He took a big sniff of me and says, "Mmm, smells like sex."

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Cast your personal question. Yes. Do your balls ever just float back up? What? Burnley playing Millwall the way. I got all my brothers coming down around Millwall. Yeah, I can't go. I'm going to a matinee of Pride the Musical.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts.