At The Autumn Decorative Fair in Battersea (29 Sept – 4 Oct) we’re offering pre-launch paperbacks of author Nicole Swengley’s art-and-design inspired novel, Fallowfield, at a special price for visitors to The House Directory stand. As a preview, we asked Nicole some questions about her much-anticipated novel.

THD: Readers enjoyed the distinctive blend of art, design and suspenseful mystery in your acclaimed debut, The Portrait Girl. Will they find a similarly compelling cocktail of ingredients in your new novel, Fallowfield?

NS: Yes, I hope so. At the heart of the story are a series of mysterious events which took place at a fictitious, avant garde art college in the 1970s. Fallowfield Hall is a grand Georgian manor – a Palladian masterpiece set in the English countryside with interesting outbuildings including a thatched icehouse, a hilltop gazebo and a shooting-lodge modelled on a Doric temple. Having been left to decay for many years, the Hall is being renovated and refurbished as a contemporary boutique hotel in the story so there are many descriptions of interiors and architecture to enjoy.

THD: Can you reveal a little more about the plot?

NS: Journalist Rowan Woodhouse has always known Fallowfield Hall as the fabled backdrop to her parent’s 1970s love-story. Seeking solace after the loss of her artist-teacher father, Rowan accepts a research project to interview college alumni in the hope this may reveal more about him, his work and her enigmatic mother who died tragically young. But she soon discovers that Fallowfield had a darker side than student hedonism and picnics on its famous daffodil lawns. Jealousies, betrayals and rivalries emerge when she learns of the death of one young woman and the unsolved disappearance of another. As she interviews former students and tutors, what begins as a project to celebrate the college’s half-centenary becomes an obsessive search for the truth. Before long, Rowan finds herself caught in a web where past and present become dangerously intertwined, impacting her own troubled life.

THD: Where did you find the inspiration for the story?

NS: From many sources, most notably a fine Palladian manor house in Oxfordshire inhabited by the independent university college attended by my sister in the 1970s. It’s now a private home and not open to the public but I visited many times back in the day. However, my descriptions of the building’s refurbished interior are entirely imaginary as are the story’s characters and events.

THD: Did you draw on your experience as a design journalist writing for publications like the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, The Times and London Evening Standard?

NS: Definitely. I had great fun writing about the fictional Holland Park house owned by a Fallowfield alumnus who is now a prominent collector of contemporary ceramics. As Rowan follows him upstairs to visit the specially designed rooms displaying his huge ceramics collection, she pauses to admire a stained-glass window depicting a potter at his wheel, overlooking the staircase. When describing the house, I had in mind the fine craftsmanship that luxury interior designers like Katharine Pooley, Joanna Wood and Gosling offer their clients.

THD: In the novel’s Acknowledgements you’ve named several contemporary ceramicists whose work inspired your fictional designs. Can you tell us more about any specific pieces?

NS: The novel’s fictional Holland Park collector is interested in practitioners who push the boundaries of the material in radical new ways. Lauren Nauman’s ‘Lines’ vessels, for example, look like strands of metal or wood from a distance but are, in fact, made of porcelain while Katie Spragg’s ‘Victorian Legacy’ glass domes contain delicate porcelain renditions of weeds like Japanese knotweed and Himalayan Balsam. Phoebe Cummings uses unfired clay to create intricate botanical garlands that shape-shift over time as they crack or shrink, echoing nature’s ever-changing cycle. And Joanna Still’s method of smoke-firing vessels is adopted in the novel by Rowan’s potter cousin, Kitty, to great effect. My thanks go to all these contemporary practitioners for the inspiration I drew from their wonderful work.

THD: Are there any designs you’ve drawn on that prove instrumental to the plot?

NS: I was greatly inspired by Beth Katleman’s monumental ceramic wall installation, ‘Folly’, when I encountered it some years ago as well as her more recent work for the V&A’s ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ exhibition. Reminiscent of blue-and-white Wedgwood china and 18^th century toile de jouy wallpaper, Folly’s sculptural tableaux are made from thousands of cast and handmade porcelain elements that seemingly portray pastoral scenes replete with architectural follies, topiary and water features. Look closer, though, and subversive elements emerge, creating a distinctive blend of dark humour and whimsical kitsch within its rococo opulence. ‘Folly’ directly inspired the commission that Joel, the Holland Park collector, gives Rowan’s potter cousin, Kitty, in the story. When he asks her to create a ‘dreamscape’ of tiny buildings inspired by Fallowfield’s outbuildings for a touring exhibition overseas she fears his reasons for the commission may not be all they seem….

THD: Have you employed any specific artworks as plot triggers too?

NS: A strong thread running through the novel focuses on the provocative cover artwork of Britain’s post-war paperbacks known as ‘Good Girl’ art. My interest in this genre was initially sparked many years ago when I wrote an article about British post-war paperback fiction for the Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine. Good Girl art plays a key role as the story progresses and weaving it into the narrative also underscores the much-discussed concept of the artistic ‘male gaze’. Current thinking may consider such images exploitative although Rowan takes a pragmatic view, likening the genre to the female empowerment enjoyed by contemporary pop stars.

Fallowfield by Nicole Swengley is published by Breakthrough Books on 8 October 2026. Available in e-book or paperback from Amazon or the Breakthrough Books webshop (www.breakthroughbookcollective.com) or to order from your favourite bookshop.