Talking in character – The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Submitted: 18th December 2020

Dorothy and Vivien from The Secret Keeper

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I asked one of the characters from a book I’d loved to take me on a tour of the places they inhabit. Authors create the scenes and evoke the settings, but what do the characters think of them exactly and did they like what the author chose for them?

The Secret Keeper Kate Morton

Visiting the London and Sussex of Dorothy and Vivien

Dorothy is the more fantastical and imaginative of the two. Dorothy loves dressing up and having fun, being reckless in many ways and dancing like she’s never danced before. So, not surprisingly, the old Lyons tea room, the dance halls and the clothes shops along Kensington High Street close to where she lives, would be sights she would recommend…..

Here is Campden Grove where both Dorothy and Vivien live….

Walk a little way and you get to Kensington High Street…where there are plenty of shops. Now Dorothy would be keen to find something nice and glam to wear….

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

The Lyons Tea House at Marble Arch is where Dorothy and Jimmy meet up, but the atmosphere of Patisserie Valerie and the cakes is pretty much how you can almost recreate that feeling today…

Try this one close to where the tea room would be…

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

A short walk away and you’ll find yourself in Kensington Gardens where one of these women meets up with a lovely man called Jimmy…

The setting in the present day where the entire mystery of this story is solved is none other than the British Library…

There are other places they could show you, and even a beautiful farm in Suffolk where the story begins…and where a mystery man walks up the path …..

Dorothy and Vivien would like to welcome you to their London. Kate Morton’s too of course.