All this week listeners to BBC Radio Four’s Book at Bedtime have been hearing Alex Preston’s latest novel Rye. It’s a sequel to Winchelsea which was published in 2022 and tells the story of the town under threat of Napoleonic invasion.
Rye won’t be published until 2027 and Alex says what’s being broadcast is a work in progress. “It’s only the first 10 or 12 thousand words that are appearing on the radio. It was slightly different with Winchelsea as I had it fully written and they did a condensed version on the radio. The commissioner at BBC Radio Four loved the novel and asked if I would give them a kind of exclusive preview of the follow-up. I said I’d be delighted.”
Winchelsea described the life of smuggler and privateer Goody Brown and her dealings with the notorious Hawkhurst Gang. In Rye the story moves on to 1804 with Goody now a grandmother to Zeke. “He’s a young man who lives at the Hope Anchor Inn and the book is all about how he is trying, in his own way, to live a life as rich, adventurous and exciting as his grandmother’s. His path takes him in different directions.”

He says the latest book may be continuing the story but the action takes place at a very different time. “It has let me focus on the Napoleonic era at the time of the building of the military canal. There’s a real threat of invasion and while Winchelsea was written with the Jacobite rebellion as the backdrop and the potential coming of Bonnie Prince Charlie, this book looks at the threat from over the water just 20 miles away. We’re in the early 1800s and smuggling is still going on, but there is also this vast war taking place on different continents with Britain stretched absolutely to breaking point. It is a very different world in which these smugglers are operating.”
Once again he says he has been inspired by Rye and the surrounding towns and villages. “The whole area has an astonishing story played out over the centuries. Every day I find something new about the people and places here. You think, crikey, really? How did I not know that? The more I read about Rye and the way it has changed and been shaped by its history and geography, the more fascinated I become.”
With Rye still to be finished, Alex Preston’s next novel to be published is very different. “I’m probably about halfway through Rye but Spyland is due out early next year. It’s a about a retirement home for spies on Corfu. A little bit of fun.”
You can hear Rye on the BBC Sounds website.
Image Credits: Kt bruce , BBC .