Goodreads asked Robert Rees:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Robert Rees There is a dark unconscious part of the brain where ideas go to rest for a while, making unsuitable friends and ridiculous connections. Then they will suddenly re-emerge into the light, changed and fitted out in new clothes. God knows how it works, but usually there is a fuse lit by some event or experience that sets the mind racing.

In my case, for "A Season in the Sun" it was a cricket match. We were holidaying in the Seychelles (I have loved it ever since our honeymoon there and returned several times) and had hired a car to drive around the island. As we approached one tiny little village, hardly more than a clearing in the jungle, I noticed a team dressed in whites on a small patch of green. they were playing cricket, a sport which I also love, but had never seen in these islands before.

There is something nostalgic about cricket played in a village (for anyone who doubts this, read "Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man" by Seigfried Sassoon) and I immediately wondered as to what level the sport had risen. At that time the answer was, not very far.

I wondered how one would start a league. Who would play, could a small village underdog make a championship winning team? Would powerful vested interests become involved?

I had recently retired from the city, and so my hero, Henry, has this as a background. And I think some of the impetus for the novel was to see how Henry develops as a person, when pitted against rather more primitive problems than those found in the City. Can he adapt to cope with what his new life life throws at him?

And for the answer to that, you will of course have to read the book...!

flag