Clare Balding (DH 1988) is one of Britain's most loved BAFTA-winning broadcasters. She is also a bestselling author and a campaigner for better coverage of women’s sport. Clare was Head Senior at Downe House and went on to read English at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her much-loved walking series, Ramblings on Radio 4, has been on air since 1999 and Clare became the face of the BBC’s horse-racing coverage in 1998. She has since presented the Olympics, Wimbledon and Crufts, as well as landmark Royal events, such as the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Clare’s award-winning memoir My Animals and Other Family was based on her childhood growing up in an unusual household. This was followed by Walking Home and Heroic Animals. Clare has also written several children’s books including The Racehorse Who Learned to Dance and The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog.

Cesca Major (Martin, DH 2000) is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. She has written fourteen novels across multiple genres and under different pen names — including psychological thrillers as C.D. Major and lighter, feel-good stories as Rosie Blake. Maybe Next Time is a Groundhog Day love story. It’s also a Reese Whitherspoon's Book Club pick, and Reese’s Hello Sunshine production company are currently developing it as an Apple Originals film. Cesca’s latest book, If I Were You, is out now and the film is in development with a major streamer.

Pastures New

Clare’s latest book, Pasture’s New, was published in September and is already a Sunday Times bestseller. It follows carefree forty-something Alex whose life is upended when she unexpectedly inherits a ramshackle farm in Wales.

It was a Downe House parent, renowned author Jilly Cooper, who inspired Clare to write her first novel for adults. While Clare was a pupil at Downe House our former Headmistress Miss Farr, attempted to ban Jilly’s popular book Riders. Not to be put off, Clare and her friends simply hid it within the covers of War and Peace to evade the censor. In the meantime, Jilly told Miss Farr if she banned her book, she wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees, and the ban was swiftly lifted. Some years later Jilly took Clare aside at the Cheltenham Literary Festival to ask why she wasn’t writing for adults – her advice was to “just get on with it.”

Pastures New follows Alex, who’s spent years dodging responsibility, while living in London and working as a gossip columnist. She receives an unexpected letter with the news that she’s inherited a crumbling and dilapidated sheep farm deep in rural Monmouthshire.

It’s a novel about reinvention, belonging and friendship. The book is a dedicated to Clare’s great friend Sue and in memory of her late husband Ed. It’s also a tribute to the countryside he loved and to the sustaining strength of rural friendships.

A ‘Faithful’ amongst ‘Traitors’

Clare was inevitably asked about her time on the hit TV show Traitors. She confessed “I wish I hadn’t pulled the lever” and offered a lesson for our girls: always read the instructions! This incident has also given her a new appreciation of the capacity of athletes to make sensible decisions under pressure, when physically exhausted and with all eyes on them.

She might have survived longer if she’d played the game differently. But she wanted to be upfront and open, to speak up for people she thought were being unfairly attacked, and to share her recollection of events when other people seemed to have mis-remembered them. The public’s response has been very positive, especially from women and girls who appreciate the way she spoke up for herself and for others in a polite way.

The writing process

Clare used the downtime during Traitors filming, cut off from the internet, TV and phones, as her own personal writing retreat. She had already written the first half of the book before the Paris Olympics, but as her busy summer of sport approached, she paused before writing the second half, and then used the Traitors downtime to rewrite the beginning and the end.

Clare’s staring point was the plot, alongside detailed descriptions of each of her characters. Cesca shared a game changer for her – the inclusion of a new column in her chapter outlines, complementing the who, what, when and where, with details of why the scene exists.

Once Clare began writing, she found her characters took on a life of their own, and they started to say and do things she wasn’t necessarily planning and even made her laugh. But when her first draft wasn’t working, she increased the pace to make things happen more quickly, creating a sense of jeopardy, as well as surprising her readers along the way.

It’s why she’s planning a sequel, so she can find out herself what happens next. She’s not yet sure what that will be, but the joy of writing will be exploring the possibilities.

Clare encouraged our pupils to write – whether it’s short stories, novels, screenplays or poems, her advice is “try and be honest.” One technique she learned from her experience on Ramblings is to zoom in and describe the small details, rather than trying to capture a vast sweep of landscape. She’s also a keen observer of people, and quoting Nora Ephron, said “everything is copy.”  She advised, once you start noticing things, that’s the time to start writing things down.

She recommends taking feedback from people you trust. When she wrote My Animals and Other Family the only person she wanted to impress was Miss Healy, her Downe House English teacher. Clare was delighted when Miss Healy complemented her on the portrait of her Housemistress, Miss Houghton, including her characteristic way of pushing food to the side of her mouth to allow her to continue a conversation with you.

Our questions

Answering questions from the audience, Clare encouraged our girls to be brave – about creativity, about writing and about preforming in different ways.

She advised anyone wanting to go into broadcasting to get used to the sound of your own voice and to think of the words as a piece of music. She emphasised the importance of considering how your words will make the audience feel. Walking away from the Medley Lecture, she said very few of us would remember the exact words, but everyone would remember how Clare and Cesca made us feel.

Another useful tip is to do your research; knowing your subject will give you confidence and build your audience’s trust in you. But it’s also important not show off all that homework, instead it should be there just in case you need it. Being passionate about your subject also helps. Cesca recalled many years ago presenting bingo on TV. She realised she didn’t care enough about it to do a good job, so she knew she had to gave it up.

Asked about Clare’s standout sporting highlight, London 2012 was an easy answer. The run up was predictably all doom a gloom in the media, and it rained for 20 out of the 21 days running up to the opening ceremony. But as soon as the sport started “It was extraordinary.” Paris comes a close second, with her highlights including show jumping in front of the Palace of Versailles and fencers coming down the staircase into the Grand Palais, as if they were on Strictly Come Dancing.

Cesca was asked about having her books adapted for TV and film and shared her surreal excitement “I’m there for the ride. It’s bonkers.” She’s particularly proud to see a female protagonist over 40 at the heart of the story, that’s so unusual in Hollywood.

What’s next

We’re all looking forward to Clare’s sequel to Pastures New and finding out what’s in store for the heroine of her story. In the meantime, with friendship such a key theme of her novel, Clare reflected on the lifelong friends she’d made here at school, as she looked forward to a gathering of those Downe House friends taking place the following weekend.

Pastures New 

About Clare Balding

Cesca Major Author