Summer is all about sport, but winter is writing time, and this has been a pattern for years for award-winning broadcaster Clare Balding.
The lead presenter on the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage since 2023 and a regular covering the Olympics and horse racing, she was most recently on our screens in Celebrity Traitors. She chats to Irish Country Living about a new departure for her – her debut novel, Pastures New – showcasing her deep affection for the countryside.
“I tend not to do a lot of telly in the winter, so that’s my writing time, and it’s something I always did. I worked for newspapers, I wrote columns, and then I wrote my first book, a memoir, My Animals and Other Family, and it seemed to go down really well. That was a big success. Then I wrote children’s books.”
Despite that non-fiction pedigree, Clare, who studied literature in Cambridge prior to becoming a journalist, was wary of writing a novel for adults. She says it was the late Jilly Cooper’s fault that this tome ever materialised at all. This interview happened prior to her untimely death, but the broadcaster was warm in praise of her no-nonsense advice.
“Jilly Cooper told me that I better start writing novels for adults, so I thought, ‘Well, you don’t not listen to Jilly Cooper,’ so I came up with this one. She just said, “Stop finding excuses and just get on with it,” recalls Clare of sharing the stage with the Rivals writer at a literary event.
On how she found the transition of actually going from writing a children’s book revolving around a girl and her horse to an adult novel, Clare jokes that it took her twice as long over two winters. While there was plenty of displacement activity – her study has never been cleaner.
“I do enjoy it once I get going. I tend to write in blocks of two to three hours and then go for a walk, or two to three hours and then watch the racing on the telly or give myself a treat.
“My treat was not a sugar lump like a horse; it was a bit of fudge, so if I got to a certain amount of words, I’d get a bit of fudge,” she says, laughing.
Clare, who is a huge advocate for women in sport, is a thoroughly engaging and witty conversationalist on a whole range of topics. This includes verything from retired jockey Rachael Blackmore, who she “can’t say enough good things about”, her current favourite reads and the many fantastic women now working in sports broadcasting.
This, despite canine interruption on our side of the phone in the form of some badly timed barks and howls. Luckily, it happened during a chat with a self-confessed pet lover, who spoke movingly about the heartbreaking loss of her dear canine companion, Archie, in 2020.
“We [she and wife Alice] don’t have a dog at the moment, but we are getting one very soon,” she explains, excitedly. “That obviously gives you a natural necessity to walk every day whatever the weather, which is a lovely thing to have in your life to give you structure. Structure is important. I like that regular need, and it’s a mutual need, actually, between you and a dog.”
Clare Balding's first novel.
With such a varied worklife, a routine isn’t something she necessarily always has, but Clare always ensures she always goes on regular long walks, and it’s clear they sustain her. Indeed, she has several books showcasing her love of the great outdoors and she presents the much-loved
series on BBC Radio 4.
Welsh landscape
It is no surprise then that the landscape is almost like another character in Pastures New. While she grew up in the countryside surrounded by horses and dogs, Clare took the action away from what she knew to Monmouthshire in Wales, where she decamped to do plenty of research, even spending time with a sheep farmer. The reason for this, she says, is from the belief that you often have to take someone “away from home to see what they’re capable of”.
“I think that’s true in life. You have to leave home to be appreciated at home. Also, just being in a different landscape, with different people – the accents, the stories, the background and sheep farming rather than horses.”
Now in the bestselling lists, Pastures New centres on Alex, who at close to 40 has her world turned upside down by a mystery inheritance of a run-down sheep farm in Wales. Armed with An Idiot’s Guide to Farming and a Welsh terrier, her arrival sets tongues wagging in the village as she attempts to discover the secrets behind the bequest.
“I’ve always been interested in the relationship between humans and animals, so if there’s a common theme through everything, it’s that, and that is certainly in this book.
“Also, the power of walking and the conversations that can be had when you’re walking is a thing I’ve also written about, and it’s very close to me. That certainly comes up,” along with mother/daughter relationships, adds Clare.
Has the book given her a better appreciation of farming? “Definitely, yes,” she declares. “I hope I reflected the difficulty of farming. If you go into it without a load of money behind you, it’s bloody difficult to make a living. It costs money, it takes time, it is full of heartache, and things are always going wrong; the to-do list is endless, and I wanted to appreciate how hard farmers work, but it is also a celebration of the way they maintain our landscape, and the same is true in Ireland.”
Award-winning broadcaster Clare Balding recently launched her first novel, Pastures New.
A fan of hill climbing, she recalls a scene in the book where they climb to the top of Skerrid, a mountain in the area. Like her characters, she revels in the “view from up there” and “the rich colour of the landscape”, but also the sheer variety of landscapes.
For her, spending time outdoors is “rejuvenating, uplifting and just something to be appreciated and shared” once people are responsible in the way they use paths and treat the land.
Very touched by the reaction to the novel since it launched last month, Clare says one description that stuck with her is that it is a “book wrapped in love”.
A big reader, she says you commit a lot when you read a book and feel very close to the characters, so she is delighted with the feedback.
Clare mentions she's a huge fan of Liane Moriarty, Jojo Moyes and David Nicholls, she says Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus was her favourite book last year.
Currently, she's reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, she is looking forward with relish to her upcoming holidays because she has “lots of books ready to go”.
Pastures New by Clare Balding, is published by HarperCollins, €17.99.
The growth of women’s sport: “I think the big gear change has been in clubs and organisations realising that it can be a commercial success – that you can sell tickets to women’s sporting events. That’s a game changer.”
Women being hard on themselves: “Sport teaches you an awful lot; you need to be confident enough in what you do to be able to say, ‘I’m not going to get it right every time, but my aim is to get it right more often than wrong.’”
More opportunities for female jockeys: “What I want is for more trainers to give more female jockeys a chance and give them the confidence of knowing that if they don’t get it right, that you’re still there for them tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Give them the security, and that makes all the difference because confidence is based on security.”
Summer is all about sport, but winter is writing time, and this has been a pattern for years for award-winning broadcaster Clare Balding.
The lead presenter on the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage since 2023 and a regular covering the Olympics and horse racing, she was most recently on our screens in Celebrity Traitors. She chats to Irish Country Living about a new departure for her – her debut novel, Pastures New – showcasing her deep affection for the countryside.
“I tend not to do a lot of telly in the winter, so that’s my writing time, and it’s something I always did. I worked for newspapers, I wrote columns, and then I wrote my first book, a memoir, My Animals and Other Family, and it seemed to go down really well. That was a big success. Then I wrote children’s books.”
Despite that non-fiction pedigree, Clare, who studied literature in Cambridge prior to becoming a journalist, was wary of writing a novel for adults. She says it was the late Jilly Cooper’s fault that this tome ever materialised at all. This interview happened prior to her untimely death, but the broadcaster was warm in praise of her no-nonsense advice.
“Jilly Cooper told me that I better start writing novels for adults, so I thought, ‘Well, you don’t not listen to Jilly Cooper,’ so I came up with this one. She just said, “Stop finding excuses and just get on with it,” recalls Clare of sharing the stage with the Rivals writer at a literary event.
On how she found the transition of actually going from writing a children’s book revolving around a girl and her horse to an adult novel, Clare jokes that it took her twice as long over two winters. While there was plenty of displacement activity – her study has never been cleaner.
“I do enjoy it once I get going. I tend to write in blocks of two to three hours and then go for a walk, or two to three hours and then watch the racing on the telly or give myself a treat.
“My treat was not a sugar lump like a horse; it was a bit of fudge, so if I got to a certain amount of words, I’d get a bit of fudge,” she says, laughing.
Clare, who is a huge advocate for women in sport, is a thoroughly engaging and witty conversationalist on a whole range of topics. This includes verything from retired jockey Rachael Blackmore, who she “can’t say enough good things about”, her current favourite reads and the many fantastic women now working in sports broadcasting.
This, despite canine interruption on our side of the phone in the form of some badly timed barks and howls. Luckily, it happened during a chat with a self-confessed pet lover, who spoke movingly about the heartbreaking loss of her dear canine companion, Archie, in 2020.
“We [she and wife Alice] don’t have a dog at the moment, but we are getting one very soon,” she explains, excitedly. “That obviously gives you a natural necessity to walk every day whatever the weather, which is a lovely thing to have in your life to give you structure. Structure is important. I like that regular need, and it’s a mutual need, actually, between you and a dog.”
Clare Balding's first novel.
With such a varied worklife, a routine isn’t something she necessarily always has, but Clare always ensures she always goes on regular long walks, and it’s clear they sustain her. Indeed, she has several books showcasing her love of the great outdoors and she presents the much-loved
series on BBC Radio 4.
Welsh landscape
It is no surprise then that the landscape is almost like another character in Pastures New. While she grew up in the countryside surrounded by horses and dogs, Clare took the action away from what she knew to Monmouthshire in Wales, where she decamped to do plenty of research, even spending time with a sheep farmer. The reason for this, she says, is from the belief that you often have to take someone “away from home to see what they’re capable of”.
“I think that’s true in life. You have to leave home to be appreciated at home. Also, just being in a different landscape, with different people – the accents, the stories, the background and sheep farming rather than horses.”
Now in the bestselling lists, Pastures New centres on Alex, who at close to 40 has her world turned upside down by a mystery inheritance of a run-down sheep farm in Wales. Armed with An Idiot’s Guide to Farming and a Welsh terrier, her arrival sets tongues wagging in the village as she attempts to discover the secrets behind the bequest.
“I’ve always been interested in the relationship between humans and animals, so if there’s a common theme through everything, it’s that, and that is certainly in this book.
“Also, the power of walking and the conversations that can be had when you’re walking is a thing I’ve also written about, and it’s very close to me. That certainly comes up,” along with mother/daughter relationships, adds Clare.
Has the book given her a better appreciation of farming? “Definitely, yes,” she declares. “I hope I reflected the difficulty of farming. If you go into it without a load of money behind you, it’s bloody difficult to make a living. It costs money, it takes time, it is full of heartache, and things are always going wrong; the to-do list is endless, and I wanted to appreciate how hard farmers work, but it is also a celebration of the way they maintain our landscape, and the same is true in Ireland.”
Award-winning broadcaster Clare Balding recently launched her first novel, Pastures New.
A fan of hill climbing, she recalls a scene in the book where they climb to the top of Skerrid, a mountain in the area. Like her characters, she revels in the “view from up there” and “the rich colour of the landscape”, but also the sheer variety of landscapes.
For her, spending time outdoors is “rejuvenating, uplifting and just something to be appreciated and shared” once people are responsible in the way they use paths and treat the land.
Very touched by the reaction to the novel since it launched last month, Clare says one description that stuck with her is that it is a “book wrapped in love”.
A big reader, she says you commit a lot when you read a book and feel very close to the characters, so she is delighted with the feedback.
Clare mentions she's a huge fan of Liane Moriarty, Jojo Moyes and David Nicholls, she says Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus was her favourite book last year.
Currently, she's reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, she is looking forward with relish to her upcoming holidays because she has “lots of books ready to go”.
Pastures New by Clare Balding, is published by HarperCollins, €17.99.
The growth of women’s sport: “I think the big gear change has been in clubs and organisations realising that it can be a commercial success – that you can sell tickets to women’s sporting events. That’s a game changer.”
Women being hard on themselves: “Sport teaches you an awful lot; you need to be confident enough in what you do to be able to say, ‘I’m not going to get it right every time, but my aim is to get it right more often than wrong.’”
More opportunities for female jockeys: “What I want is for more trainers to give more female jockeys a chance and give them the confidence of knowing that if they don’t get it right, that you’re still there for them tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Give them the security, and that makes all the difference because confidence is based on security.”
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