Nell Leyshon interview

In The Telegraph, Charles Spencer talks to playwright and novelist Nell Leyshon about her burgeoning career.

It wasn't until after the birth of her second son 12 years ago that Leyshon started to write seriously. "I just thought, right, I'm going to write a novel. So I literally sat my six-month baby on my lap and wrote one. I got to the end of it, and thought, it's not good enough. So I wrote another one. And that was terrible. And then I did another one. And that wasn't good enough either." So with reckless pluck, she burnt them in her vegetable patch. "Dom kept asking me if this was what I wanted to do, and I said yes, it felt so good to get rid of it all."

Leyshon's new play, Comfort Me with Apples, is at Hampstead Theatre, from Jan 18-27, then touring until March 31. Her adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now is at Sheffield Lyceum from Feb 22-March 10, before transferring to the Lyric Hammersmith.