LitFest ’25 – Andrew Miller – ‘The Land in Winter’

In June The Land in Winter, Andrew Miller’s tenth novel, was awarded the 2025 Walter Scott Prize and more recently it has been selected for the Booker short list. Miller is also on the short list of the 2025 BBC Short Story competition with results to be announced later this week.

Andrew Miller, in conversation with Jon Stock, journalist, author and vice-chair of LItFest Committee, told the Litfest audience about his inspiration for The Land in Winter and explored the characters, themes, setting and historical period.

Set in the severe winter of 1962 to ‘63 when the snow started falling on Boxing Day and stayed until Easter, Miller was able to draw on anecdotes from his mother as well as careful research. This involved reading old newspapers, novels set at that time such as those by Penelope Mortimer which focused on middle-class women, their lack of opportunities and frustrations.  He listened to music of the era and delved into social history. “The world was on the cusp. There was a fantastic sense of the modern world about to emerge, a feeling that your life might be different for you than it was for your parents.”

Miller has been praised for examining the minutiae of life and in The Land in Winter the weather and the rural setting aid this. The focus is on two very different couples – Eric, a country GP, and his wife Irene, and Bill and Rita. Bill is trying but failing to make a success of running a small farm. Rita is described by Miller as a ‘Mandy Rice Davies’ figure, warm, fun but with a difficult past. As the novel progresses and the temperature plummets their lives start to unravel. Miller compares the forced isolation of the severe weather to the Covid pandemic – everything changed and freedoms were limited.

The opening of the novel can be described as gothic. It is set in a Victorian asylum in the middle of a foggy night. The opening touches a theme relating to the war. In 1962 although it was seventeen years since the war ended people were “still looking over their shoulders at what was, as well as moving forward.”

However, Miller doesn’t set out to focus on themes in his writing. “Don’t worry about themes, stay with the people, pay attention then themes will emerge.” Although he writes in the third person he says “I get very close and personal to the characters and lean into them as I write.” If there is a theme at all in the book he describes it as being “how big your life can be.”

Miller has written both contemporary and historical fiction. It is unusual for an author to write in different genres. However, in both genres he tries to use the South West of England setting wherever possible. He currently lives in a small village in South Somerset. The Land in Winter is set very much in the village where his father lived, near Bristol. “You write about what you know.”

Miller is already writing his next novel which he says “could not be more different from The Land in Winter.” His Marlborough LitFest fans are eagerly awaiting its publication.