Q: What made you start writing?

A: Frustration, I suppose.  I had been obliged to give up teaching, which I loved, because of my sight, my four children were still small and I was feeling very low and unappreciated.  I began writing colourful, adventurous historical stories as a form of escape.  By night, when I did most of my writing, I was able to inhabit my own imaginary world where I was free and fulfilled.  I'm sure this saved my sanity.

Q: How did you get your first book published?

A: I thought there must be other housewives caught in a similar relentless routine who might well enjoy this form of escape.  I know I used to love reading historical writers such as Jean Plaidy and Georgette Heyer so I looked in the library to find out who published Jean Plaidy and then sent my finished manuscript to him.  To my surprise and delight the accepted it and asked me to write more in the same vein.  I was so naive about the publishing world that I didn't realise how extremely lucky I had been.

Q: You've written other kinds of novels beside historical -- what made you decide to change genre?

A: I’d always been intrigued by mystery. At the same time I was becoming aware of senses other than sight – smell and touch especially. My two youngest, Annie and Paul, used to buy me parma violet sweets on their way home from school because they knew I loved the scent. The two things gelled, and the idea for a story about a Victorian girl haunted by the mysterious evocative scent was born. That was the novel entitled A Scent of Violets. That book led me into writing gothic novels for the American market.

Q: But you’re perhaps best known as a regional novelist – the press have called you Yorkshire’s Catherine Cookson. How did that come about?

A: My editor Rosemary de Courcy wanted me to write about a topic which really gripped me. She knew how deeply I felt about my family’s history and also about my roots in Yorkshire. So I renamed my home town Huddersfield as Hawksmoor, and thus the Hawksmoor series of sagas began. They span over 150 years, from the time of the Luddites up to the terror of Jack the Ripper in the 1950s.

Q: Of all the books you’ve written, which is your favourite?

A: That’s a hard one. I’m usually in love with the one I’m working on at the moment. When I was fascinated by the idea of reincarnation my favourite was The Brackenroyd Inheritance. When I wanted to tackle the challenging structure of writing in two different time-scales at once it was The Jericho Years. And when I had the idea of writing a murder from the point of view of the psychotic murderer it was A Midnight Smile.

Q: You husband’s favourite is Cedar Street.

A: Mine too, I think. I never miss an episode of Coronation Street on TV and that’s what Cedar Street is about, a miscellaneous group of families living in the same cobbled street in 1910 whose lives impinge dramatically on each other’s. The idea, based on the birth of an illegitimate child, which forms the kernel of the story, came from Deric’s mother. She only learned as an adult that she was illegitimate, the child of the woman she thought was her eldest sister. I thought the idea intriguing, but only later learned from readers that this situation was more than common at the turn of last century.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I don’t like to talk about work in progress – it’s a very personal and private matter, but the theme is how a mother and daughter fail to relate. I’m taking my time over this one.

Q; Have you any other ambitions yet to fulfil?

A: I think I’ve achieved most of what I set out to do. A couple of years back I decided I’d like to get my Equity card as an actress and served my time as an extra – or supporting artiste as we’re called nowadays – drinking in the Woolpack in Emmerdale till I’d notched up enough points. I learned a lot  there – yes, I think I’d like to write a TV screenplay, if only to prove that blindness does not blinker one’s visual imagination.

Q: Any ideas what it might be?

A: Deric and I both feel Cedar Street is ideal for serialisation, so who knows?

Interview with Aileen Armitage   streaming audio

www.historytoherstory.org.uk a site dedicated to recording the lives of Yorkshire Women.