Kate Mosse's new book is a 'love letter' to Sussex in the autumn

Best-selling author Kate Mosse has said Sussex in autumn is "like nowhere else" as she marks the publication of her latest book exploring the season.

The Chichester-based writer said Autumn: The Story of a Season draws inspiration from Sussex landscapes including Fishbourne marshes, Chanctonbury Ring and Devil's Dyke, as well as traditions such as the Lewes bonfire celebrations.

"It's a book about memory, belonging. It's a book about what it means to come from somewhere," she said.

"It's my love letter to Sussex. It's very much about the season.

"It's part of a series. Michael Morpurgo wrote Spring, Val McDermid wrote Winter, Bernardine Evaristo, the Booker Prize winner, is writing Summer.

"So autumn is my favourite season, and Sussex in the autumn, there is nowhere like it."

Her latest book came out on Thursday, but Mosse is already working on her next novel, Borderlands, which is due to be published next year.

"It's set partly in Bosham and Hastings in 1064 and 1066 and the modern day, and then a lot of it is set in the mysterious, very spooky tidal island of the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy," she said.

"It's inspired by the Sussex history of the Norman conquest and all of this kind of thing, but also my own family history."

The writer said she had a family tree dating back to 1066 when a Mosse had served in the army of William the Conqueror.

"When he survived the Battle of Hastings, he decided Sussex was a very nice place to live. And so he stayed."

Mosse said she had always wanted to write about her own family history.

Her book is due to be published following the exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry in London, and before an exhibition at the British Library next autumn about the Normans, ahead of the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror in 2027, she said.

The author described her next project as "a big old novel", adding that she had already been working on it for a couple of years.

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