Charlotte Betts

Here are some ideas to open your Book Club discussion on The Palace of Lost Dreams but do feel free to make up your own questions, too.

What do readers usually remember about a novel? Nearly always the answer is ‘great characters’.

Last May I fell in love with the castle on Eilean Donan in Scotland so this month I visited Corfe Castle, in Dorset. It was a boiling hot day but the view of the village and surrounding landscape from the top of the hill was well worth the effort in the heat.

In the 17th century, ‘London’ was the City of London. Within its stone walls, it had grown into a bustling, overcrowded residential and commercial centre. As the population grew, space was at a premium, and storey was piled on storey. Tall, jettied timber houses overhung narrow streets. It was this pattern of building that made the Great Fire of London in 1666 so hard to control and led to the loss of 80% of the city.

I’ve recently returned from a holiday/research trip to the Highlands of Scotland where I fell in love with the glorious scenery. The Scottish weather is notoriously unpredictable and, true to form, the first day was so cold my fingers felt frostbitten, the second so wet I nearly drowned but after that it was so hot I narrowly avoided sunstroke!