Exploring the Spirit of Writing: Lady Carnarvon discusses writing inspiration with Santa Montefiore at Highclere Castle- The real Downton Abbey

I'm delighted to have the prolific author Santa Sebag Montefiore as my special guest. We reminisce about our early days and dive into Santa's successful writing career, including her latest book in the Pixie Tate series. Santa shares insights into her writing process, the inspiration behind her characters, and her love for weaving spiritual themes into her novels. We also discuss the challenges of breaking into the literary world and the importance of hope and faith for young people today. Join us for a heartfelt conversation filled with personal anecdotes and fascinating stories.

00:45 Santa Montefiore's Writing Journey

01:38 The Time Slide Series

03:51 Spiritual Themes in Writing

06:17 Early Inspirations and Writing Beginnings

09:34 First Publishing Success

16:49 International Book Tours and Challenges

23:44 Personal Spiritual Experiences

You can hear more episodes of Lady Carnarvon's Official Podcasts at https://www.ladycarnarvon.com/podcast/

New episodes are published on the first day of every month.

Transcript

 Thank you so much for joining me in my podcast today. I'm sitting here in a beautiful room at Highclere Castle, and my guest is Santa Montefiore, who has written no less than 30 books at least, and her latest books are called The Time Slider Series. So you are not just given a sense of place, but you travel through time and explore different worlds.

And I think this psychic world, enthralls all of us. You can enjoy the smells and sense of Argentina and the Spanish and Italian light and smells and lavender and life in a very different light to that in England. But I'm thrilled to be talking about secrets of the Start at sea. It actually begins in the Gilded Age.

Well, that's how I think of it, which is another part of Julian Fellows. Great. Writing skills. He's done Downton Abbey and the Gilded Age, and that's where Santa Fiori starts, and there's no less person than Julian Fellows commending her book to you on the very front cover. When I first met you, Sandra, it was in a earlier life with your maiden name and you were being amazing and modeling at a fashion show I was putting 

on with a girlfriend.

I remember that, and I hated the dress I had to wear. It was all sort of fru and floy and I looked awful, but I did it as a favor to a friend and she's still a dear friend. So I'm very happy I did it. Although I hated the photographs, 

luckily I have forgotten them and I can't remember that time. Anyway, I'm so grateful to you for joining us and it's the world of writing and books, and I have just finished your latest book, and I have read an earlier two books, particularly about.

Napi, who's a hilarious character to start with, your latest book. 'cause you tend to write a series of them and twos or threes, don't you? May I ask the secrets of the Style at sea and I really like the title. 

What number book is this? So. In terms of all my books, it's probably about my 32nd title. Um, oh my goodness.

I wrote four children's books called The Royal Rabbits of London. So if you count those four and the two Flappy books and a couple of other books that I've done for quick reads and a long short story type thing, it's probably about 33, 34 titles. But in that series, which I call the Time Slider series, that's number two.

Our shadows in the Moonlight came out last year. Secrets of the Style, it Sea is out now and then the next one comes out next year and that wraps it up. So this is a trilogy. How amazing. 

Again, starring the same Pixie 

It stars Pixie. When I came up with the idea, it was because I changed publisher and they wanted to launch me with a new series, but they wanted something different and I'd done the DeVere Chronicles, which is actually six books.

Number six has come out in Europe already, but not in the uk. I think it'll come out next year. I wanted something that wasn't centered around a house. Which is the DeVeres. It's a castle in island. I thought, well, let's center it around a person instead. And then I thought to have a psychic medium.

Detective, I love the world, paranormal world, and I thought it'd be quite fun to have a mystery in every book, a bit like a poro. Where each book has a different mystery and my main character, Pixate, has to slide back in time, which is this gift, this secret gift that she has in order to unravel this mystery in the past.

But because of the love story that she starts in the past and because of the way the book works and the law of attraction that she triggers when she falls in love with this man in another time, back in Victorian England, she. Ties this man to her. So in the next book, they encounter this one sutres of the style at sea.

They meet each other again years later, and then in the third book, they meet each other again. So I couldn't do it like a poro where you could have just 20 books because I couldn't sustain the love story for 20 books. So having had this grand idea that I'd write a wonderful series and I could just do it forever until I die, I have had to wrap it up after three books because of the love story.

So you'll then have to come back 

again to write the first of 20 books. Well, then exactly around a psychic medium. Without a love story. Without a love 

story. Or you do it in a different way where her love story is wrapped up and you obviously follow her new life, but you could continue it as a psychic medium and going to unravel other people's love stories and things.

But I'm not sure. I think it's just one of those things that. Maybe I have to just leave it as it is and start a new series and do something different. But the paranormal has always been a massive interest of mine and the spiritual threads are in every one of my novels getting stronger actually as I get older because I become more true to myself and also my readers.

I get correspondence from them and I know what they like, and I know that the spiritual fed threads are important to my readers, so I will keep doing that. Absolutely. 

Do you think they offer your readers hope of different dimensions or. Why do you think they, they trigger such strong feelings 

in your readers?

From the emails I get, most of them say things like, I lost my husband. Your book was very thought provoking. I feel hope that he's still around, that he's still with me, that his consciousness still exists somewhere else. That there's a place we'll all go, we'll meet again. That sort of thing. I think all those.

Books that have strong spiritual themes and threads do make people question, what are we here for? What's the purpose? And they think beyond the material, beyond the things, the world of form. As that car calls it, he's one of my favorite spiritual writers, and they start thinking about the soul and the soul's journey and what the purpose of it is, and it just makes people feel hope, I think.

That funny little small word, which has so much in it, doesn't that it's a really important word because I think a lot of the trouble suddenly I have young children while they're in their twenties, and the troubles that young people have now with anxiety and depression and fear, it all comes from a lack of that hope.

I think there's so much that's scary in the press about the world and their future that they don't feel much hope. I was talking to my daughter about it yesterday, how I feel that a lot of the problems that young people have is that they don't have faith, that they are worshiping the great temples of, uh, celebrities and fashion and cosmetic surgery and Instagram and TikTok and things like that.

And actually it's also superficial. It, it's so unfulfilling. I think if you find something deep and meaningful. Then you have that lovely hope and it just gives you another dimension to your life. 

You have an anchor, I think. Yes. 

An anchor. I do 

think so. It on the ground. I've thoroughly enjoyed this book, but when you started to write, what propelled you into the world of authorship?

Did you 

always want to be a writer? So I think that certainly if your, I'm sure it's the same if you are an artist, you sculptor. Things like that. It's something that you are rather than something that you do, and I always wanted to express myself with words. So the minute I could hold a pencil, I was drawing little pictures of hedgehogs and writing stories about hedgehogs.

And I grew up with parents who loved. Books and my father used to read Winnie The Pooh Wind in The Willows, the Hans Christine Anderson fairytales and Oscar Wilde fairytales. He put on all the voices and he'd bring it all to life, and I was absolutely grit by all those stories. And Alice Markley.

Actually, little Gray Rabbit stories were really important. To me growing up, and a lot of the stories that I wrote as a child were very derivative of her stories. They were about animals and squirrels and hedgehogs and rabbits and hairs and things. Looking back on it, I've always written for me. So in those days, I wrote.

Little children's books and did all the pictures. Very, very amateur, little pictures, but I loved doing it. And then book tapes came along and so then I started recording myself and I played the flute at school. So you'd have the odd little interlude of a little flute when the mole was having a picnic or something, or looking at the ribbon, and then little flute.

Anyway, hilarious. And annoyingly, I've lost the tape. I found one not that long ago, and I dunno where I've put it. And then when I. Grew up a bit and went to boarding school. Then I was inspired by Julie Cooper, and so the books became more like her books. I was always being inspired by the books that I was reading, and that was what I wanted to read.

It's like Israeli said, if I want to read a book, I'll write one. It's a bit like that. If I wanted to read a book, I wrote one, and then I wrote stories for. The girls that I was at boarding school with who were in love with boys at the boarding school, Sherburn, it was, so there was the Sherburn Boys school next door.

And so I transformed these greasy spotty youths into rep Butlers and Rupert Campbell blacks. And then when I left university, I always thought one day when I'm a grownup and I, did you read 

English University? 

I didn't not, I read Spanish and Italian, but I did English A level and I. Would have probably done English.

I don't know whether my English A level was good enough. I went to Argentina for a year and came back fluent in Spanish and then did Italian as a beginner. I wasn't allowed to do French as a beginner, otherwise I would've done that. So I did Spanish, Italian at university. Literature was always part of my course.

Yes, my Spanish course, my Italian course. I did both literature in those languages. I've always loved reading, but I focused on one day when I was a grownup, I would write a serious grownup novel like a. Gone with the wind or a Thornbirds type book. And then I turned 25 and it was like, what am I doing? I'm grown up now.

If I don't do it now, I'll never do it. And that's when I really knuckled down and thought, okay, I'm gonna write a proper, serious. Novel as opposed to these sort of children's things or young people's things that I was dabbling with. How 

hard was it to get your first book published? 

So I sent a few books off to publishers, but I never really expected to get anything published.

I really didn't expect to ever be a published writer. I did it as a hobby because I loved it. I'd go to bookshops and I never even felt envy. Because it was so out of my range of what I expected could happen to me that it wasn't even an ambition of mine in those days to be a writer. So I would just walk into a bookshop and buy books, and look at books and love books, but I never thought, oh, one day I want to be there.

Just didn't occur to me, and it was really in my twenties, mid twenties, after having sent a couple of things. I wrote a Mills and Boon for fun because a friend said I should try it, and that was rejected, but it was really funny. I wasn't upset when they got rejected. I sort of fully expected it, but then when I was 25, having lived in Argentina and the first book Meet Me under the BU tree was.

Based on my experience of Argentina and that I felt was a good story. And it was the first time that I actually thought, God, this could work. I, maybe this could save me from life behind a desk in an office, which you know, was fine, but I didn't love what I was doing and I had no ambitions to be a CEO of a company or anything.

And suddenly my little window appeared I thought. God, there's a little light there. Maybe I will try to be a writer. So I sent that off to four agents and three rejected me very quickly, and it was the first time I really suffered from a rejection because I actually really thought I had a good story.

And I was really surprised that they didn't agree with me. And so I got these three rejections. It was hugely upset and put out, and how can they not see how clever I am and what a wonderful story it is, how can they miss it, you know? And then three months later, and I'd given up and I was working at Ralph Lauren at the time, and I just thought, well, you know, I'll stare Ralph Lauren and I get nice 50% off clothes and it's all very trolley.

And then the fourth agent did AP what? Wrote back and said, I love it, but it needs work. And I can see a bigger story. It was a 50,000 word book at that point. It ended up being 150,000 words. Wow. Because I added 50 with the agent and then another 50 with the publisher, and I got a publishing deal. And after that, once you get an agent, yeah.

It's not so hard. To get it published. If the agent takes you on, they're pretty sure that they can get you a publishing deal. And I was very lucky there were two publishers that were interested. So there was a bit of a, I mean, I say bidding war, very grandly. You know, it was hardly JK Rowling, but there were two publishers who wanted me and I ended up going with Hot and Stout, and then I never looked back.

I did a book a year. The funny thing was that I didn't think I had more than one book in me, so they always liked to. Sign you up for two books. They don't want just one off. They want to make you into a brand author, ideally. So they signed me up for two books and it was like, oh no. Now what? Ooh, what do I do now?

I mean, I've, I put everything, my, all into this book. How can I possibly write another? But actually it all came flowing out and it, I've never had a problem with. Finding stories. So where did you go with your second book then? Chile? So the first one was Argentina and the second one was Chile. In fact, the first four were based in South America, but they weren't bought by the Americans.

And America, as you know, is a very important market. Not only is it huge, but you know, we all want to be published in America. You are much more likely to get a movie made or TV series if you're published in America. So America will not interest. In Latin America, I was told that they view Latin America not as Polo and Tango and all these romantic sort of Eva Peran or Avita, the musical.

That's how we view yes, Latin America, especially Argentina, it's very glamorous. They see it as illegal immigrants and people coming across the border and they have a, a more negative view, or they did back then. I think things. Have changed. In fairness, I think things have really changed, certainly in the last sort of 10 years, but we're talking 30 years ago.

It was a different world back then. And so the fifth book that I was commissioned to write, I moved to Italy, and then having studied Spanish and Italian, I knew Italy well. I'd lived in Italy. I did my gap year in Italy from university. Where was that? Milan. Milan. I went to Milan, but I traveled around. Yes.

And I spoke the language. In Argentina. They're very Italian. In fact, they say that Argentines are Italians who speak Spanish and want to be English, and a lot of the language is very Italian. The way they speak is very sing-song. You like the Italians, and I lived in Italy at that time with the cousins of the people that I lived with in Argentina, so they were very related.

The two countries in my. Psyche, and it was called Last Voyage of the Valentina, and then after that one, so many of my books were then based in Italy. The Americans love Italy. They just always write to me, love Italy. Yes, everybody loves Italy. What's not to love about it? The Italians are gorgeous. The culture is stunning.

The architecture, the food. They love children. The climate, the Cyprus trees, the smells, it's just so beautiful. And after I wrote The DeVeres, which was the six books about the War of Independence in Ireland, people wrote and said, God, I love Ireland. It's, it's gothic and misty and damp and dark. But can you write one in Italy Now, you know people love Italy, so I wrote a lot of my books based in Italy.

No, I think I also love Italy and I think there's a sign, it's never a phrase from Valdi says, if God can have the rest of the world, if I can have his. 

Oh, well, I probably would agree there actually, if I could have a house anywhere else, I think it would definitely be Italy. My husband's family originate from Montefiore in Italy.

Oh, okay. Yeah. They were expelled from Portugal during the Inquisition, and they settled in Mexico. Then they were denounced. Jews practicing Judaism when it was in, you know, prohibited. Yes. And in their basement, they were meant to be practicing Judaism and they were all garroted and burned except a little baby boy who was spirited outta the country by relation or somebody, and settled in Montefiore in Italy.

And then he took the name Monte Fur. So that's where Montefiore comes from. Somewhere in Italy. I should go, don't I? It's probably lovely. So you've never been not to Montefiore, not to Monte. No. It silly isn't it? Yes, because they're Montefiore streets. There's one in Batey. A friend of mine invited me for dinner and her house was literally next door to Montefiore Road.

And it's like, how didn't you tell me that this is my road, this is my road. And in America, if you are in New York, nobody has problems spelling Montefiore 'cause they have a Montefiore hospital. Whereas in here in England, everybody spells it weirdly because it's, they go, Monte, or 'cause it's IORE. And if you say IOR, it doesn't go into people's heads.

They go, sorry, IERO. You know, and they can't get a bit in America. It's wonderful. Everybody can same. Monte Fury. So do you undertake many American book tools then? I've had some disastrous tours of America. I haven't been back on book tour for a very long time because my books haven't been published in America For a while, the des, the first three of the de books were published by Harper Collins, but I made a real mistake by allowing them to change the title.

So the first one is called Songs of Love and War, and they called it originally the girl in the Castle. But they then, because the second one that they called the Irish girl, did much better or the, some of the Irish castle or something, they then changed the first one. To the Irish girl, I think. Anyway, it was a total muck up and just wasn't well planned and organized.

And after that I said, no, I'm not publishing any more books in America until we find a really good home. So now with this series, the Pixie Tate series, or the time slide, a series as I call it, the first one, it's already available on Kindle, and this one is also available on Kindle or Audible. It's on ebook basically in America right now.

It's already available. So who but the heart? This is Orion. This is, and they're publishing them in America too. So the hard copy of Shadows in the Moonlight will be available from about the 17th of August, I think, in America. But the eBooks are already available of both books in America. You can get them ready.

Wow. On ebook though. And are they on audiobook as well? They're on audiobook as well. Do you read them? No, I absolutely don't. 'cause I can't do all the accents. In fact, if I tell you this story, your American fans who are listening to us, excuse my really bad American accent, but talking about book tours, I was in a place like Milwaukee at a huge, huge borders bookshop.

It was massive. And they had the whole bookshop, and then next to the bookshop was like this huge building. Where people could give talks. So I was led when I went to give my talk in inverted commas on one of my book tours about 15 years ago. I was led by this lovely lady through the bookshop and she started telling me, and this is where my American accent comes in.

I mean, she started saying last week we had Isabel ndi. It was amazing. We had like 300 people. It was standing room only. We had to fight them off and we're actually gonna get Isabelle back again in a month or so so that the people who couldn't come can come because she was so amazing and everybody loved her.

So I'm thinking, okay, there were like 300 people. This is fantastic. So I'm walking through, I'm getting really confident, and I arrive in this room. Podium, bottle of water stack of my books, big promotional posters and sort of 300 empty chairs, except in the back row is a man in a baseball cat reading a book that isn't mine.

So I say to the lady, so when am I on? And she looks at her watch and she goes like, now. I wanted to die. So I fall on the man in the baseball cap and say, you are my only fan. My heart filling with gratitude. And he looks really embarrassed and he says, actually, I'm, I'm just waiting for my wife and kids to finish shopping.

I know. So that was my experience of that and being in a bookshop, rainy day books, which is a lovely bookshop in Kansas City. I had a tea with about sort of 10 customers and one of the ladies said, Stephanie Myers is giving a talk at the football stadium this evening. It's 50,000 people. And there I was with my sort of 10 ladies having center tea.

So, you know, it's such a funny thing being a writer because you get people writing to you saying, you are my favorite author. You know, I love your books. And then you have. Moments like that where you feel, why do I do this? I know nobody loves me. It's awful. So you can never get too pleased with yourself, which I suppose is a 

good thing.

It is very humbling and I've been like, I like supporting libraries in this country. Yes, me too. Travel to various libraries or community halls and I. You get there, you just think you have trouble for at least two hours. Yeah. And then you look at the audience. Oh my goodness. And they've only probably come out 'cause it's warmer than Yes.

Yes. 

I've done that too. I've gone up to Glasgow all the way to Glasgow for one person, and I think more were meant to turn up. But there was one person sitting there and I just had to say, you know, should we just have a cup of tea and chat all the way to Glasgow from London? I mean, you know, you just 

have to actually, I, I don't know how you, how one does it, but nevertheless.

Um, I suppose I enjoy writing and speaking and sometimes you do have a lucky round. I think you are right. I 

think also you have to look at what you have and what it enables you to do. So if I love writing, I always loved writing. I used to do it when I wasn't paid for it, and I would do it. On my weekends or when I have free days or free moments, it was always my default.

This is what I love doing, so I'm able to do this now. I don't have to go into an office and do a job that I don't like. I get paid to sit at my kitchen table with my cup of tea and my chocolate biscuits in my lab door, and I can put my music on and like my scented candle and drift off on my imagination and write, which is what I love doing.

Do a scented candle is very important to you. You write yes. Yes, it has to be scented. Actually. It doesn't really have to be scented, but I like it's an indulgence. I like a scented candle and I often, if I invite people for dinner, sometimes they'll bring a scented candle, look at me apologetically and say, oh, I'm sorry.

You probably get loads of these. And it's like, I love them because I use so many of them. I feel the candle raises the energy in a room. The music takes me off. I have a playlist for every book I write. So the. DeVeres, which is Ireland, was all the Howard Shore Lord of the Ring soundtracks, that very haunting Celtic music.

And then for Pixie Tate, this series I watched the English, which starred Emily Blunt. And the music for that is this very gothic western music because it's about a Victorian lady who goes out to the wild west to seek revenge on a man who's killed her child. And it's. The most powerful music. It's noir and Western spaghetti Western, but noir.

I mean, it's so rousing and tragic and sad and wonderful. And this minute I heard it, I thought that's what I'm gonna listen to for this series. And I listened to the same music. Over and over again because if I only have half an hour to write, the music will put me right back in the book and I don't have to read over what I did yesterday because I'm right back in the middle of the drama again and I feel it.

So yeah, it's lovely to be allowed to do what we do and sometimes book tours and events like that can be demoralizing, but I have to bring myself back all the time. This is where I wanna be and this is what I'm doing. And thank goodness I have readers who allow me and enable me to do it. There 

is something extraordinary about writing, and I find words turning into characters and people care about is something really, really special.

Pixie Tate is, I think is, is a psychic in the secrets of the style at sea and the one before and. You mentioned that you also are a psychic and you are connected to other realms if you like. Put it like that. When did you start sensing this from a child or when you were older? 

So when I was a child, I used to hear voices in my room, and in those days I'd hear them when I wasn't asleep.

Be in my room playing and I'd just hear voices and they weren't very nice voices. Uh, I actually thought the lights were talking to me because they were sort of angry people and I was really scared. And then I would wake up in the middle of the night and see people walking around my room and sense people walking around around my room.

And I never told my parents about it. I think I just thought it was normal. Like you'd hear the hooting. I lived in the middle of the countryside in Hampshire, and I, you know, would hear an owl in the woods. And I wouldn't tell them about that either. So I can only assume now looking back that that's the reason that I never shared those experiences.

I did have terrible nightmares, recurring nightmares around the same time, and I definitely told 'em about that. Um, but it wasn't until I got into my teens that I became interested in the paranormal and I read lots of books about. Life after death and spirits and things like that. And my father was very interested in that as well, in metaphysics and things.

So when I did start communicating with him, probably when I was about 11 or 12, he then lent me books and the first book he lent me was Elizabeth He Initiation, which is about reincarnation and it's ancient Egypt, and oh my goodness, that just totally. Ignited a little spark that then raged and has raged ever since, and I didn't really realize what a gift it was until my sister died.

So she died seven years ago. She was 45 years old. I fully expected. Her to come through very quickly. Nothing happened, and I wondered why is it that, you know, I see other people who have nothing to do with me walking around my room at night. So when my sister did finally come through to me, I was lying in bed at night and every night I'd go to bed wanting her to come and asking her to come.

And I was just so tired that night. I just didn't even ask. I just went to sleep. And when I opened my eyes, she was by my bed leaning forward. I'm going Santa to Santa. Santa, Santa Santa, like that. And she looked like she was 18 years old. Really glossy, really happy, really gorgeous and beautiful and healthy.

And bearing in mind, she was a drug addict and an alcoholic and had been very, very unhappy at the end of her life. And when she appeared to me, she was as an 18-year-old, full of health and absolutely radiant. And she was in a baby pink t-shirt. Now that's significant. So when after communing with her, I didn't say anything.

I didn't get any words back. I just was with her and looking at her and she's like a hologram. And when I sort of lost her, I still felt her, but I'd lost the image of her. I then got up to go to the bathroom and woke my husband up and I said, oh, I've just seen Tara. And he said, um, oh, great. Went back to sleep.

So in the morning, he's sitting in the kitchen with me and bearing in mind he doesn't believe in any of this stuff, and he thinks I'm a bit mad. So I call my mother and I tell her, and she said, that's amazing because we buried Tara in a baby pink t-shirt. Mommy had never told anyone. Not even my father knew that Tara had been buried in a baby pink t-shirt.

The undertakers had come to the house, what do you want to bury her in? Her old bedroom contained a few clothes. One thing was a baby pink t-shirt, so that is what she was cremated in. And by the way, when I said that, my husband heard it, and when I put the phone down, he said, I saw her too. When you woke me up, I was dreaming of a brunette and a baby pink t-shirt.

And he thought that was really amazing because he doesn't easily believe in things that he can't see and rationalize with his. With his intelligence, with his mind. And I think that Tara projected herself because Barry, you know, she, she wasn't in her physical form. I think that she projected herself in her baby pink t-shirts so that my mother would know that I had really seen her because I knew I'd seen her.

I love seeing spirits. I just wish I saw them more often. Maybe I'll see a few here. 

Well, there's always a chance, but, um, I think this is an old house. And it has a strong sense of place and many people who lived here for generations and some sort of get caught up here and stuck here and others. Pass on through.

I hope that many people will come back and continue to read your trilogy, which is part of the pixie saga. I had a friend called Pixie. Oh, did you? Every special older lady. Oh, she was very precious. I'm not sure whether she could see people or not, and I'm quite sure she has gone into the diet. Oh. 

But anyway, 

the pixie series is, is very precious and I've thoroughly enjoyed secrets at the start.

See, I hope you are. Everyone who's listening to this will read it and tell their friends to read it as well and go back to read some of Santa's other books. And I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed your Flappy series 'cause she's perfectly bondable but hilarious. And actually if you want some hilarity and I couldn't figure out how on earth you are going to redeem her.

I know. Well then I thought, oh my God, how's this gonna work out? But anyway, it's really good summer reading and it's. Fun. It is fun. Well, I wrote it in lockdown to entertain my readers. Well, I think it's very entertaining and like it'll draw me into more of your book. Santa. Oh, so every year in the summer Santa, we have a garden party.

Although next year I thought we'd up a little bit and have a summer or beginning with cocktails and moving on to dancing. And I'm going to actually make everybody real. So if he were to bring one guest to this wonderful party, apart from your husband perhaps, who would be obviously irresistible, who would you bring?

Julian Fellows, of course you cannot do better in terms of wit and charm and probably lighter foot on the dance floor too. 

Well actually, Julian's come to some of my reading parties. I sound like house's bouquet. She tends to prefer to watch them. I guess we got down to Nabby because of good food, good wine, and good conversation.

Thank you so much for joining us. 

Well, thank you very much for having me here in this beautiful, high, clear castle. It's just such a privilege to come through the gates and see it in the flesh of having seen it so often on television, so it's really magical. So thank you very much. 

Honored that you were here.

Thank you, Santa.