Gill Hornby to host Q&A at Newbury Library on Weds
Her debut novel The Hive was released in May and signed copies will be available at the end of the event, which will run from 7pm to 8pm.
The event is free, however spaces are limited so tickets must be purchased in advance by calling Newbury Library on 01635 519900 or emailing newburylibrary@westberks.gov.uk
Earlier this year, Gill Hornby spoke to newburytoday.co.uk’s sister publication, Out and About, and her life before The Hive.
“I was a journalist, I had worked at TVAM right at the beginning, I went to Newsnight, where
I met my husband, then I was at Breakfast Time for a long time,” she said. “I was working for BSB, the rival satellite channel to Sky, and was on maternity leave with my first child, when one Friday evening I switched on the television and they said Murdoch had taken over and everyone had got the sack – and I thought ‘whoopee’.
“ He made the decision for me.
“I guess I’m an all or nothing sort of person... so I had another child, and another... and then another.”
The family moved to the West Berkshire village, and Gill threw herself into local life, and in particular the school community – and something that had been niggling her since childhood started to formulate.
“I always had this idea to do something about female cliques.
“I was conscious of it as a child, how there were all these girls that we would lookup to and they would dominate us.
“And then when my eldest started primary school and I was back in the playground, I thought blimey, here we go again.
“There were all the these groups – the popular ones, the sporty group, the teacher’s pets and the rebels behind the bike shed having a cigarette.
“And I saw the comic potential, as anyone who has ever done fundraising and volunteering would agree.
“But I didn’t do anything about it...until I was given the boot again.”
Although she never went back to television, Gill did “keep her hand in” journalism, writing articles and book reviews, and later she landed herself a column in the Daily Telegraph.
Her ‘sparkling style and solid common sense’ commentary ranged from the relationship between Robbie William’s drug-taking and weight to championing the contribution of the over-60s in an increasingly ageist society.
However, in 2010, stuck in Tenerife owing to the Icelandic ash cloud that grounded flights all over the world, Gill wrote a news item that, when turned down by her employers, she filed for the Guardian newspaper instead.
When she made it home finally, she was fired by the Telegraph.
“Some of the most influential decisions in my life have actually been made for me,” she laughs, “but I never would have written my book if they hadn’t.
“With journalism drying up, it was time to think afresh and I thought, I know, I’m going to have a go at my novel.”
It was about the same time that one of her daughters was “not having a very nice time at school”, and to help her through it, they watched teen comedy Mean Girls, about high school cliques and how to survive them.
The message she wanted to get across to her daughter was that, in all areas of female life, the metaphor of the hive is played out; it’s often how we relate to each other as women.
“I told her, it’s exactly the same for me.
“It’s not just at school, or mother’s in the playground; it’s book groups, NCT groups, all-female offices.
In fact one person who has read it said, ‘I feel like you’ve been spying on my dog walking group’.”
Whether you recognise yourself or people you know in the characters or not, the book has a positive message about schoolgate mothers, an issue Gill thinks needs addressing.
“The characters all made compromises about their careers.
“Not everyone goes off at 7 in the morning and comes home 7 at night, most of us make some sort of deal domestically – so then there is some energy left over. And we do a lot in our communities.”
Without giving the ending away, she says: “In the end, they have built something.
“It shows that together we are stronger. And we look after one another.
“‘The hive’ is hugely positive.”
She laughs off the terms MumLit and ‘Bridget Jones for the next
“Some of the most influential decisions in my life have actually been made for me, but I never would have written my book if they hadn’t.”