It may seem odd to do your research after you’ve finished the book. In this case, it was five years after the novel was published. But everything is useful to a writer, and I’m sure that somehow or other I’ll make use of the stone-carving I did this summer.

It’s not that I did no research at all for SET IN STONE. I talked to stone-carvers, handled stone, studied the work of Eric Gill, learned about Jurassic limestone. But this summer several things fell into place and I found myself chip-chip-chipping away.

Shortly after SET IN STONE was published, I met a local stonecarver, Bernard Johnson, who was exhibiting during Artweeks in Oxford. I loved his work, and could see at once that he was influenced by Eric Gill. I’d decided that if DFB gave me a commission to write LOB, I would find a stone-carver to make me a Green Man for my garden, and was hoping to find someone suitable; as soon as I saw Bernard’s work, the search was over. He made me a calm and wise Green Man, in Portland stone, which is now in my garden.

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I first read Jane Eyre at the age of eleven, and my main memories of that first reading are of the harshness and horror of Jane’s treatment at Lowood school,  the death of her friend Helen, and, later, of Jane creeping around the dark corridors of Thornfield Hall. Much of the rest passed me by. I was too young, just as I was too young to appreciate Pride and Prejudice at school a year later; I toiled dutifully through that. When I returned to it, years later, I was amazed to find all the wit and humour that simply hadn’t struck me at the age of twelve. At that age, too, I read The Diary of Anne Frank with only the vaguest idea of why the family had to go into hiding.

Early reading has a particular power, though, and it intrigues me that stories read years ago make their impact in my own writing, in ways I sometimes don’t realise until afterwards. The Secret Garden has made itself felt in Nevermore, for instance, and Lob (the title taken from a poem of the same name by Edward Thomas) owes something to Bambi  - I mean the deeply tragic novel by Felix Salten, not the Disney film – though I don’t suppose anyone else would notice.

With Set in Stone, the influences are more obvious. Its debt to The Woman in White is apparent from the opening scene, in which Samuel meets a distraught Marianne by moonlight. The country house, the two daughters, the art tutor – a direct borrowing. Another Wilkie Collins novel gave me a structural idea, too – the less well-known No Name, the intriguing and very cleverly plotted story of two sisters who find themselves penniless when their father’s Will reveals that he wasn’t married to their mother, as they had supposed. In No Name, Collins uses the device of carrying the plot forward with whole chapters, at intervals, made up of letters. I used this same technique in Set in Stone, though with only one letter each time, and enjoyed the freedom and succinctness of using different voices to drop new hints or ingredients into the plot: Charlotte, the governess, is unexpectedly called away; a friend of Samuel’s invites him to Brighton, recalling his gregarious student days; Mr Farrow issues a veiled threat to his former employee.

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That’s right, The Green Man – also known as Lob – has been spotted! Many believe that The Green Man is a character from English myth and legend, but we here at DFB know otherwise.. And now we have evidence! Lob was caught on camera on World Book Day, see for yourselves -

Have you got any World Book Day stories to share or photos to show us? Please do send them in.

Biggest thanks to Lob for joining in World Book Day and making this year such a special one.