Douglas Stuart

Sometimes when I'm in an audience now and I sort of look out and I feel a little bit nervous, I have a joke to myself.

I think, how many people in this audience have worn the underwear that you designed?

Yes.

I mean, I am a Scotsman who grew up in Glasgow, but I had never been to the Outer Hebrides before.

You know, they're quite far from the mainland and it takes some effort to get there.

But in 2019, when I was thinking about writing a new novel, I decided I was going to go to the Archipelago of Islands and just explore it and see if a story emerged.

And I realized that every little settlement I went to, that when I was talking to someone, I would sit at a kitchen table and have tea and pancakes or whatever they baked for me.

It was, you know, all the islanders were very hospitable.

But I was hearing about their settlement and the people in the village.

And there was always a bachelor or some spinsters who had never married.

And for quite a conservative Christian place, that seemed a little unusual.

And I asked everybody, you know, well, why did so-and-so not marry?

Why didn't they ever sort of take a partner?

And the answer was often, well, they missed their moment was what was said.

And I came to learn that in rural places, you know, the window to find someone to love could be quite short, quite narrow.

And that just really sparked my imagination.

And I said just very casually one day, well, and of course, some of them might be gay and that makes it harder to find love.

And the woman I said it to said sort of reared back and said, oh, no, no, no, that's that's not so that's not possible.

And of course, I just knew historically that some of them must have been maybe not the people we were talking about, but some of these people that had never found love.

And that was really the moment that the novel came to life.