CLARE FLYNN

Sometimes when working I get dizzy. Not out of tiredness, though there's plenty of that, but from the distance I travel without leaving my chair. One day I'm walking the blacked-out streets of wartime Sydney, absorbing the anxiety of a city that suddenly finds the war not on the other side of the world but terrifyingly close to home. The next day, I'm on a hillside in Sri Lanka, back when it was called Ceylon, surrounded by a green counterpane of tea bushes stretching in ever

I thought it might be interesting to recreate the routes taken independently and together by Norton and Stella in The Star of Ceylon.

Clare Flynn discusses the research she undertook when writing her novel The Star of Ceylon, and gives her tips for historical research