Berkshire


<p>Raise a glass &#8211; we have a new literary star in our midst. We love to see that local literature professor Claire Lynch has recently scooped the 2025 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction with her first novel, <em>A Family Matter</em>. Spoiler alert: it’s every bit as gripping as the title suggests. Tender, thought-provoking and powerful, the novel tackles love, prejudice and the secrets that tear families apart, earning praise from judges as “raw, vivid and ultimately hopeful.” </p>



<p>The Nero Book Awards, now one of the hottest tickets in the literary calendar for UK and Ireland writers, celebrate the best books of the past year which champion outstanding writing and readability. And Lynch’s win firmly puts Windsor on the fiction map. We caught up with Claire to chat family drama, her fave foodie spots, and the book she couldn&#8217;t put down.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1000" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch.png" alt="windsor author claire lynch a family matter book interview nero awards shortlist" class="wp-image-86580" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch-800x800.png 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch-400x400.png 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch-768x768.png 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/claire-lynch-500x500.png 500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-congratulations-on-your-award-win-how-does-it-feel">Congratulations on your award win! How does it feel?</h3>



<p>Most of writing a book is obviously just sitting on your own and imagining that it might one day become a book. It&#8217;s a lovely, funny thing because it feels very private with these made-up people you&#8217;re living with for the couple of years you&#8217;re writing it. So, all of these things that have come along with it I just didn&#8217;t expect. Being able to celebrate it with all the people who helped me along the way feels like a cherry on the top.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-also-your-first-fiction-book-what-made-you-finally-make-the-leap-and-write-it">It&#8217;s also your first fiction book! What made you finally make the leap and write it?</h3>



<p>I don&#8217;t want to necessarily use the term midlife crisis, but there definitely was a point where I thought if I don&#8217;t try and do it now, I will never know. I&#8217;ve written academic books before, I&#8217;ve written a work of memoirs, so I was kind of edging towards it and then I thought, &#8216;do you know what, I love books, I love reading&#8217;. It was a bit of a put your money where your mouth is and see if you can do it yourself. I think once you&#8217;ve said it out loud to people as well, you&#8217;ve got to follow it through.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-with-everything-around-brooklyn-beckham-family-drama-is-quite-a-hot-topic-at-the-moment-what-can-readers-expect-from-a-family-matter">With everything around Brooklyn Beckham &#8211; family drama is quite a hot topic at the moment, what can readers expect from <em>A Family Matter</em>?</h3>



<p>I think you can expect family drama, but in a very sort of British, slightly uptight way. So, Maggie, who you might say is the mum at the centre of the book, has drama coming from all sides: her parents and also looking after her children who are getting older. So, it&#8217;s that feeling of being in the middle and trying to work out who she is. But there&#8217;s also family drama that I think lots of us will have some kind of experience of, which is this sort of secret that&#8217;s been in the background of this family all these years. Nobody goes near it or they politely tiptoe around it. And when it comes out into the open, what does a family do with that? </p>



<p>The more I meet people and talk about the book, they don&#8217;t necessarily have <em>this</em> family secret in their background, but there&#8217;s always something where they&#8217;re like, &#8216;oh, you know, my Nan always told me this&#8217; or &#8216;I didn&#8217;t find out this until I was 14&#8217;. That&#8217;s just part of what it is to be in a family in a way and how we deal with that is partly what the book is about.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-do-you-hope-readers-take-away-from-it">What do you hope readers take away from it?</h3>



<p>I hope they take away the idea that we&#8217;re all changing all the time. And one of the things we have to deal with in our lives is decisions and actions that felt right at the time. As we get older, as things change, we have to look back and sometimes say, &#8216;I would have done that differently&#8217;. You can&#8217;t go back and change it, but you can think about who you become in the next version of yourself. I think it&#8217;s quite a hopeful book because it&#8217;s partly about how you keep changing, but also who to be in each stage of your life.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-inspired-the-book">What inspired the book?</h3>



<p>There&#8217;s a court case at the centre of the book, so partly, it was discovering the real history of some of the cases that happen in the book. That was a real inspiration because I read all of the court transcripts, I read all the newspaper reports, all the archives, and I became a bit obsessed with this sort of injustice that had happened in the 1980s. That powered me on. And then I just really liked thinking about interesting dynamics between families, whether it&#8217;s fathers and daughters or mothers and their children. All these things knit together to make the book.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-are-your-favourite-places-to-hang-out-around-windsor">Where are your favourite places to hang out around Windsor?</h3>



<p>All the places where coffee is available is very, very high on my list, which is nearly everywhere in Windsor. I am a sucker for the cakes in Heidi&#8217;s in the Daniel department store. My children are very keen on doing any kind of admin that will require us to be in Windsor because there&#8217;s a café and a toy shop with a real train going around. What more could you ask for? I think we also must be among the top users of rainy-day walks around The Savill Garden. I would say there&#8217;s not a tree in Windsor Great Park that I haven&#8217;t stood next to while my children are like monkeys in a tree.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1870" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4.jpg" alt="lee lee windsor" class="wp-image-82219" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4-642x800.jpg 642w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4-802x1000.jpg 802w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4-321x400.jpg 321w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4-768x957.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/lee-lee-4-1232x1536.jpg 1232w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-foodie-spot">Favourite foodie spot?</h3>



<p>I used to absolutely love Patch in Windsor, and now, I&#8217;m loving their new restaurant LEE LEE. You don&#8217;t have to sit out in the rain anymore, although that was brilliant about Patch in its own way. If I can ever organise my friends to leave the house at the same time, which is increasingly hard, you can&#8217;t beat an evening out in the Windsor and Eton Brewery, just sharing some loaded fries and a couple of drinks.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-you-have-a-favourite-bookshop">Do you have a favourite bookshop?</h3>



<p>The Marlow Bookshop is a big favourite of mine as a good independent bookshop. I like to make any excuse to go over there.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-the-place-you-go-when-you-need-to-gather-some-inspo">What&#8217;s the place you go when you need to gather some inspo?</h3>



<p>It&#8217;s probably a bit of a cliché really, but I do like a walk along The Long Walk. I don&#8217;t have to do any thinking about where I&#8217;m going, and I have a terrible sense of direction. Even I can&#8217;t get lost on a big, long straight path with a castle at the end of it. I can walk around from where I live up to the far end, and that&#8217;s a really good way for letting things mull over in your head.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-your-ultimate-writer-s-block-hack">Your ultimate writer&#8217;s block hack?</h3>



<p>It&#8217;s not very glamorous, but I think the only hack for writer&#8217;s block is to remember the writer&#8217;s block doesn&#8217;t really exist. Especially when writing is your job, you just have to get through it. Just like you do with anything else, you can put the kettle on, put a load of washing on or something like that, go for a walk,  but ultimately the only cure is writing. You&#8217;ve just got to sit down and get something out.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-books-are-you-loving-right-now">What books are you loving right now?</h3>



<p>I&#8217;m currently reading <em>Stone Yard Devotional</em> by Charlotte Wood which I&#8217;m loving. Then I&#8217;ve just read <em>The Correspondent</em> by Virginia Evans which everyone was recommending to me and is beautiful. It was a horrible, rainy day when I started reading it, and I said to myself, &#8216;oh, I&#8217;ll just read page&#8217;, and then there goes by a whole day. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-anything-new-in-the-pipeline">Anything new in the pipeline?</h3>



<p>In between all the travelling I&#8217;m doing at the moment, I&#8217;m trying to write the next book. But there&#8217;s lots of exciting things for me happening, mostly travelling around and talking about the book. It&#8217;s been translated into 14 different languages now, so when it comes out in a different country, I sometimes get invited to meet with booksellers and do various talks. You know, as it turns out, there&#8217;s family dramas all over the world. It&#8217;s really revealing what people take from it which is slightly different in different places. But ultimately, it&#8217;s just amazing that the thing you got up for at 5am to write in your spare room is now suddenly out in the world. It&#8217;s a great feeling.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="2414" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter.jpg" alt="claire lynch a family matter book nero awards winners nero awards shortlist" class="wp-image-86517" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-497x800.jpg 497w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-621x1000.jpg 621w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-249x400.jpg 249w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-768x1236.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-954x1536.jpg 954w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/02/a-family-matter-1273x2048.jpg 1273w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>



<p><em><strong><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/464739/a-family-matter-by-lynch-claire/9781529942354" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Family Matter</a> by Claire Lynch is out now.</strong></em></p>


Muddy meets award-winning local author Claire Lynch

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