It’s amazing how much of this research I needed to write the story, but didn’t end up using in the actual book. And when things got way out of my depth, I employed a fantastic historical researcher, Heather Gammage, who helped me to really dig for some of the facts that I needed that weren’t so easy to find. I joined all of the cemeteries’ historical societies (The Friends of Highgate Cemetery, The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, etc) and read their newsletters each month. It was definitely hard to know when to stop, because the research was so interesting! I read many, many books-from long and involved histories about each of the cemeteries themselves, to how the dead have been dealt with in London from the very beginnings of the city, to accounts of Himmler’s involvement with the occult. How do you approach researching for a novel like this and is it hard to know when to stop? It was after quite a bit of reading that I stumbled upon the Nazi’s interest in the occult, which gave me the idea of how the worlds of the living and the dead might be bridged. It took a little longer for me to work out how to combine the ring of cemeteries with WWII. I was looking at a whole new world-the world of the dead of London. As soon as I saw that, I knew my story wouldn’t be about just one cemetery, but that all seven of these cemeteries would be important in their own way.

I found a map of the seven cemeteries and something jumped out at me-because the cemeteries had been built on the outskirts of the city, they’d formed the shape of a loose circle. Learning more about London’s Victorian cemeteries seemed a logical place to start, so I began reading around and within about five minutes, I’d learned that there were seven Victorian cemeteries built on the outskirts of London in the 1830s and 1840s (they have since been given the nickname the ‘Magnificent Seven’).

This included Victorian cemeteries, London, ivy, history, WWII, foxes, tea and all other sorts of strange bits and pieces. I sat down with a notebook and began to jot down all the things I loved and wanted to cram into the one story. I was living in Cambridge at the time and decided I wanted to write something that was very, very English and just for me. It was the setting itself that gave me the idea for The Turnkey. Time and place are crucial elements in The Turnkey. Reviewer Maria H Alessandrino spoke to the author. Rushby’s middle-grade novel The Turnkey is a ‘page-turning mystery’ set in London’s Highgate Cemetery during the Blitz.

The turnkey by allison rushby