Sally Magnusson (17:00)

‘This is my third novel, and it feels quite personal - not least because it was inspired in part by my own family history’

Jamesina Ross the heroine of Music in the Dark is a fictional character, but her subsequent life is based on that of Sally’s own great-grandmother, who was herself evicted from the Isle of Mull and had to make a life for herself in poverty in Glasgow and the neighbouring town of Rutherglen. Like her, Jamesina takes a lodger into her room-and-kitchen to make ends meet…..whereupon new, undreamed of possibilities begin to open up. As the night progresses, the couple discover that they are linked by a shared past; the eviction of Greenyards, Strathcarron in 1854 during the Highland Clearances.

As before, Sally Magnusson, best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster puts her focus on the lives of women who have historically been invisible, examining love in older age with searing honesty.

In conversation with Rodge Glass.

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