How award winning Sheffield author Berlie Doherty forged her writing skills in the Steel City

As her latest work delights the critics, Berlie is now firmly rooted in Edale but is still a regular visitor here, as both her daughters live in the city.

She is a Sheffield fan, drawn back by cultural and family links. Her new book Rose Doran Dreams acknowledges the link, a revisit to a book she penned in Sheffield.

It strays from her familiar audience as Berlie, aged 78, has written more than 60 books, all but one being for children and teenagers.

The blurb says her new book is a psychological fairy tale. “Rose escapes into magical stories that she and her strange, fantasist neighbour Paedric create. Can she ever find her true self again?”

So what is a psychological fairy tale? “I had to come up with something to get it into a category,” says Berlie. “It is psychological in that it takes the route that Rose Doran takes through stories to what we would be beginning to call a psychosis, a breakdown.

“She gets so wrapped up in stories, imaginings, that she begins not to be able to tell the difference between real life and imaginings.

“It becomes quite disturbing at times and is particularly difficult for her husband and son. Also, she has a relationship with a man next door, who is a complete fantasist and she gets drawn into his imaginings. It is the sort of relationship which she has never had, it is not physical, it is perfect but weird.

“This book is bred from a novel I wrote 30 years ago called Vinegar Jar, which was published in England and America. It went out of print and in lockdown I decided that I would like to revisit it.”

It is an ebook. “This is a very useful way to read. It had been a printed book, had that life and I just felt maybe go down that road.”

Some of the themes are familiar. “Magic is nothing new to me, quite a few of my children’s books are fantasy and magic realism stories. I retell traditional fairy tales and love having magical elements.”

So what is Rose’s true self? “She’s reaching into her longings, her past. The original title of Vinegar Jar made her sound trapped in her stories. Rose Doran’s Dream is more positive. The stories are her way of escaping an unfulfilled marriage and are her ideas of romance. Her true self is a 17-year-old girl who falls in love with a tap dancer.”

Berlie is the author of the best-selling novel Street Child and has written plays for radio, theatre and television. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won many awards, including the Carnegie medal for both Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody.

Quite a CV. “It seems absolutely crazy, I can’t believe it. I seem to have spent half my life publishing stories.”

Born in Liverpool, Berlie’s first stories and poems were published on the children’s pages of the Liverpool Echo. She studied at Durham, Liverpool and Sheffield Universities before taking a job as a social worker in Leicester.

She moved to the steel city in the 1970s with her first husband. They lived in Stannington in a house with great views and her three children were born during this time.

Berlie taught at Ecclesfield School for two years and then got a two-year secondment with the BBC, writing and producing school programmes.

She worked with David Sheasby, education producer at Radio Sheffield. This forged her career. “I knew then that a creative career was what I wanted.

“I went back to Ecclesfield for a year and during that time was writing non-stop. I left and became a full-time writer - I haven’t worked since!

“I was lucky because my first book was accepted and published.”

How Green You Are was written for 11-year-olds and gave Berlie the boost she needed. “I wouldn’t have had the self-confidence to keep submitting if I’d been rejected.

“It was a very lucky start and I just went on with a gradual growing confidence.

“I was always working on something, if not three things and loved being able to move from one genre to another. It kept me inspired, kept me happy.”

Berlie moved to a bigger house to accommodate her family in Ecclesall. “I loved it. You could walk to town. I loved the theatres, the schools and being surrounded by wonderful countryside, which I kept driving off to so I could write.”

Her collaborations included work with city string quartet The Lindsays. Peter Cropper, leader of the quartet, commissioned three stories to be performed during their concerts at the Crucible Theatre.

She wrote The Midnight Man, Blue John and the Spell of the Toadman specially for them. Her prose was woven into the music and the quartet also commissioned a libretto - the words - for an opera based on her children’s novel, Daughter of the Sea.

“I’ve always been a singer in choirs but the approach came from Music in the Round. They thought they liked my style of writing and commissioned me, it was wonderful. I fell into that very willingly.”

She is a fan of Sheffield, not only because the grandmother-of-seven likes keeping in touch with her family but also because she’s a member of the city’s Bach Choir.

“It is a very creative city. There are loads of writing workshops, writing hubs, music and art hubs.

“I go to the theatres a lot - the cultural life and family life draw me back to Sheffield.”

Berlie lived here until 1993. She now lives in Edale in the Peak District with her partner Alan James Brown. She has a writing room which looks out on the Pennines and Kinder Scout. Her first drafts are handwritten wherever the mood takes her, then comes the writing room. “I stare into space and get inspired.

“My favourite work is usually the one I’ve just finished working on and hopefully I get better and not worse.

“Rose Doran Dreams is about magic and I allowed myself to indulge in it.”

Good choice because the critics love it. ‘Rose Doran Dreams is a spell-binding tale. Its off-beat story world is beautifully realised, its atmosphere subtly sensual with a sinister undertow. This is an utterly original, vivid, gripping, and sometimes disturbing, read,” says fellow writer Lesley Glaister.

So how does Berlie start work? “Sometimes I start with an image, like a curled up stone that looks like a snake - The Snake-Stone - and that picture won’t go out of my head for months until I’ve found a way of releasing it.

“Sometimes it will be a situation – a young couple forced to think about their futures, together or apart - Dear Nobody - or a character, a destitute child coping on his own - Street Child.

“With all of them the story is the last thing to come, but the germ of the idea floats around until I know it won’t go away and I have to write about it.

“Sometimes I despair halfway through and think there’s no way of bringing the story out, but even so I can’t leave it alone and it won’t leave me alone until the book is written.”

This process is clearly rewarding. “I have fond memories of writing Spellhorn, which I did with four children from the former Sheffield school for the blind.

“They used to come to my house, we went swimming and on walks. I entered into their imaginative world and it was a really important book.”

The pandemic was productive. She wrote a children’s book called Haunted Hills set in Derbyshire which will be published later this year.

“I re-read Vinegar Jar and thought I wanted to have another go, make it the book I wanted it to be and I had time to do it.

“The quiet and calm that descended on Edale was amazing.

“You immerse yourself in the situation for months, it inhabits your mind because you never quite leave the story.”

So is writing for children different from writing for adults? “The difference lies largely in the subject matter.

“There are also layers of emotional and intellectual intensity in a novel for adults which may not be appropriate in most writing for children, except in teenage fiction. I don’t temper my use of language or imagery.”

Does she use different approaches for different age groups? “You must never confuse your reader, so young children should have a simple structure to follow. Older readers can be invited to work a little, so I may use two or more narrative voices, or employ flashback, or invent an original way of speaking, as in Spellhorn.”

Her advice to budding writers is simple. “Read lots and if you are a beginner don’t try to concentrate on one sort of writing. Read poetry because the music of the language will enhance your prose style.

“Read shorter stories because once you get to grips with the narrative you can write a longer novel.

“Writing plays is immensely helpful because it makes your dialogue work. You can write the same scene three ways, as a novel, as just dialogue or as a poem. This draws your writing together and concentrates it.”

To buy Rose Doran Dreams visit https://berliedoherty.com/books/rose-doran-dreams-psychological-fairy-tale/