Hello and welcome to Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
Today's guest has made a career of disappearing into other people's lives.
On stage, he's been John Proctor in The Crucible.
On screen, John Porter in Strike Back and to millions of cinema goers.
He'll always be Turren Oakenshield, the dwarf king in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy.
But away from performance, he's turned to writing,
first with a tort thriller set among Nobel Prize scientists,
and now with a novel that takes him back to his own roots,
to a village shadowed by trauma and secrets, and to the long shadow of childhood memory.
Richard Armitage, welcome to Meet the Writers.
Thanks for having me.
It's really great having you here because of course I know you as the handsome hero in all the Harlan Coban television shows and you've done so much else
as I've described,
but what a surprise to pick up this book and find out this is not just another celebrity churning something out under somebody else's.
talent, you've actually written this great book.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to defend myself as a writer already,
which I think is why I kind of immediately put my hand up and went, can I write another one?
I was sort of surprised myself that I could actually write something longer than an A level essay,
because that's really all I've ever done.