Helm - Sarah Hall

Helm - Sarah Hall with Charlotte Fairbairn

Sarah Hall is a writer of show-stopping genius. Not our words, but those of The Guardian when her first novel, Haweswater, appeared in 2002. Twenty-four years and five novels later, including the Electric Michelangelo, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, we celebrate Helm, in which Britain’s only named wind - near-neighbour of The Lake District Book Festival, at Cross Fell, in northern Cumbria - becomes an accessory and witness to the machinations of humankind.

An exuberant, time-travelling, deep epic of a book - oh, did we mention that it is also enormously entertaining? - Helm may be Hall’s masterpiece.

Sarah is in conversation with fellow-Cumbrian and fellow-novelist Charlotte Fairbairn.