Today it's my absolute pleasure to welcome Antonia Hodgson to the blog to talk about her second book
The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins which was published yesterday.
Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins?
It begins with a prologue. Tom Hawkins is travelling through the streets of London on a cart draped in black crepe, with a coffin at his back. He’s on his way to the gallows at Tyburn, where he will be hanged for murder - though he protests his innocence. We learn that he has been promised a royal pardon, but as the cart rolls closer to the scaffold, he begins to fear that he’s been betrayed.
The novel then travels back a few weeks to January 1728 and we discover how Tom came to be tried for murder. And we realise that he’s writing this account as his final confession, from prison.
It’s quite a dark book, really. But there are some jokes in it, I promise.
Had you always intended to write this as a sequel/follow on to The Devil in the Marshalsea or did it just creep up on you as you wanted to continue Thomas' story?
When I wrote The Devil in the Marshalsea I wasn’t sure if it would find a publisher. In fact an editor friend of mine said, rather despairingly, ‘Oh god, don’t write about the Georgians! No one buys books about the Georgians!’ I always hoped I might get to continue the story, though. I wanted to explore Tom’s character further - see how he progresses. He intrigues me, because he’s still young and capable of significant change. What happened to him in the Marshalsea has affected him deeply and has repercussions in this new book - though he doesn’t necessarily understand that himself. It’s hard to see these things when you’re living through them.
