Walking on Location: A Fatal Love
Walking in Ruth’s Footsteps: Locations in A Fatal Love
Your guide for today is Louisa Treger
Your destination? – London, its bars and nightlife.
Your map of A Fatal Love locations
Map of A Fatal Love locations
I love researching my books. It’s like being a detective. You follow all kinds of leads – going to archives, talking to people who had a connection to your protagonist, falling into a rabbit hole over a single footnote. But my favourite part of the process is visiting the locations where the book is set. There’s no substitute for standing where your characters stood, seeing what they saw, breathing in the same air and feeling the pavement under your feet where events unfolded.
Louisa Treger
Map of A Fatal Love locations
When you’re writing about a real person – in this case Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, in 1955, for shooting her abusive lover – this kind of grounding is even more important.
Holloway Prison (c) Wikipedia
Map of A Fatal Love locations
Unfortunately, the location at the heart of the novel doesn’t exist anymore. Holloway Prison, where she spent her final weeks and was executed, closed in 2016. There’s no gate to stand at, no cell or visitors’ room to imagine her in. So I had to rely on books, photographs, prison records, and the narratives of people who had been inside. It’s not nearly as satisfying as being there in person, but eventually a picture of the prison and the lives within it emerged in my mind.
Map of A Fatal Love locations
Luckily, there were other locations I could go to. The Old Bailey was first. I sat in on a trial to experience the solemn, wood-panelled room, the sheer theatre of English criminal justice. Wigs, gowns, ritual – a culture that felt like a performance in court and a fraternity beyond it. In many respects, I don’t think much has changed since Ruth’s trial in 1955. I certainly couldn’t have written about it without this visit.
Map of A Fatal Love locations
I searched for the ghost of 1950s nightlife on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge – the world of hostesses and after-hours drinking clubs in which Ruth made her living. The clubs are long gone, replaced by the polished shopfronts of central London, but I stood there anyway, trying to layer the older era over the modern street. Smoke, sequins, spilled gin, and underneath it, something more grubby than glamorous. Imagining backwards is a strange kind of time travel.
Map of A Fatal Love locations
The best research day was at the Magdala Pub, outside which Ruth shot David Blakely. There are bullet holes in the wall, and when I saw them, I felt a jolt. I thought, This is the actual moment, preserved in brick. I stood there, picturing the scene playing out right in front of me.
Afterwards, I found out the bullet holes were fake – drilled into the wall decades later by the landlord. The truth had been replaced by a better story, and nobody seemed to mind much either way.
Map of A Fatal Love locations
I visited the Magdala with three brilliant fellow historical fiction authors – Gill Paul, Kate Thompson, Maggie Brookes and Louise Fein – and that’s the part I treasure most. We had lunch and a swim in the Hampstead ladies pond, and I thought how lucky I was to share this day with four talented, funny, endlessly generous women.
Map of A Fatal Love locations
We compared notes about research and writing, and laughed more than was probably appropriate given the subject matter. Research trips are lonely work sometimes. This one wasn’t, and A Fatal Love is better for it.
Thank you so much Louisa!
BookTrail Boarding Pass: A Fatal Love
Insta: @louisatreger
