1. What sparked your interest in the Fitzwilliam family? What attracted you first: the location, the house or the family?

I was first drawn to the house. I came across it in the mid 1990s while filming a television documentary. Seeing it for the first time, I couldn't believe the size of it. Or the fact that I'd never heard of it. Why, I wondered, wasn't it as well known as Chatsworth or Blenheim? It was not open to the public and seemed neglected and mysterious: along the entire length of the façade the shutters were closed. After that first visit, Wentworth House became something of an obsession. Whenever I could, I would take time away from my television work to research its history. Then it became the epic scale of the Fitzwilliam's story that intrigued me: how in the space of fifty years, this family - in 1900, one of the richest and most powerful in Britain - were stripped of their house, their power, and ultimately, their heirs.

2. Have you ever thought of writing historical novels?

I very much enjoy reading historical novels. Recently, I've been reading The House at Riverton by Kate Morton, which is wonderful.  At some point in the future, I would love to have a crack at writing an historical novel, but for the moment I'm rooted in non-fiction. Though it is a terrible cliché, I do believe that 'truth is stranger than fiction'. The arc of the Fitzwilliam's story is quite extraordinary and one would have been hard-pressed to make it up!

3. Why did you choose 1902 as the starting point of your book?

I chose 1902 because it was the year the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam, a great Victorian patriarch, died. His funeral, attended by tens of thousands from all over the neighbourhood, was testimony to his family's immense wealth and power. Yet it marked the end of an era and the beginning of the family's unravelling.

4. Where did you get your information about the contrasting lives of the Fitzwilliam family and the village people from?

I am deeply indebted to the many people I met in the neighbourhood around Wentworth during the course of my research, particularly those in their late eighties and nineties whose memories of the village before the war - and the conditions in the mines - helped me to bring the past to life. Their recollections were a valuable source of information, as were those of the Fitzwilliams' surviving descendants. There is also a wealth of material in the public archives in South Yorkshire - photographs, letters, diaries, and unpublished memoirs - which I found tremendously helpful.

5. Was your research conducive to a better understanding of the political geography of the area and the strong hold that Labour always has had in this region?

The story of Wentworth House is inseparable from the story of coal. It was heartrending to research the conditions in which the miners lived and worked in the villages around Wentworth before the Second World War. At the turn of the last century, the neighbourhood was symbolic of one of the bleakest statistics of the time: 1% of the population owned two thirds of the nation's wealth, 88% owned nothing. To delve into the reality behind these figures - to learn the extent of the poverty and hardship - was immensely shocking. In the struggle to set right this social injustice, Britain's million miners were to become the driving force. Labour, of course, offered them a vehicle and I found it fascinating to see this played out in the context of a small community.

6. What do you think of the fact that your book is catalogued as a Biography in some libraries and as British History in others?

Part biography of a family, the book is also the story of a community and a house, as well as being a social history. So it could belong in a number of categories. But wherever the libraries choose to place it is fine.