Harcourt have posted an interesting interview with Clare Clark, historian and author of the wonderfully visceral London novels THE GREAT STINK and the forthcoming THE NATURE OF MONSTERS, on their website:

my aim has never been to specifically expose London’s underbelly; although, I suppose that in The Great Stink there is a great deal of it. Instead, what has always interested me as a historian and novelist is the daily minutiae of lives lived in places that are familiar to us but in a style and context that it is difficult for us to understand. The dirt and the smell of historical London were habitual inconveniences that its occupants took for granted; tolerance of squalor was ingrained which explains why, in the main, life was raucous and violent by our standards. If we are to get under the skin of a period, it is my view that we need to appreciate the context. If we, as modern human beings, find it difficult to behave well, how much more difficult was it for someone in the eighteenth century for whom life was cheap and filth a daily hazard? Against so dark and brutal a background any kind of goodness and kindness seems to me to shine with startling brightness.

THE NATURE OF MONSTERS is available May 19th and Clare will be attending the BOOKED! festival in Toronto on June 10th.

Click here for the full Clare Clark interview

Click here for THE NATURE OF MONSTERS mini-site

Click here for So Misguided’s review of THE GREAT STINK and THE NATURE OF MONSTERS

UPDATE: Click here for a neat BBC Radio 4 interview with Clare! (AUDIO)