A big inspiration, one of our favourite authors and a wonderful supporter of the brand, Santa Montefiore is our next inspirational woman for VC News.

What’s the greatest love story you’ve been inspired by over the years? 

I think Bridges of Madison County is one of my favourite movies and books. But I also loved The Notebook and An Affair to Remember.

 

Your earliest memory of scent? 

Orange blossom. I don’t know where it comes from, but every time I smell it – usually called Neroli – I get dizzy and nostalgic, but I  can’t remember where it comes from. Must be somewhere from my childhood. That’s why I buy Victoria’s Orange based room scent and candles, L’Orangerie!

 

Your most treasured travel story? 

I think the year I spent in Argentina has made the deepest impression on me, and inspired my first book, Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree. I absolutely adored Argentina. The people are so big hearted and the pampa is breathtakingly beautiful. I fell in love with it.

 

What are your favourite scents in our collection? 

L’Orangerie, Cuir Sacre and Madame Julia

 

The books you recommend everyone should read this year?

I have my old favourites: Edith Wharton Age of Innocence, Sarah Waters Fingersmith, Daphne Du Maurier Hungry Hill, Elizabeth von Arnim The Enchanted April, Sue Monk Kidd The Secret Life of Bees, and The Invention of Wings. I love all Jojo Moyes’s and Mary Wesley’s books

 

Who has been your biggest inspiration? 

Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier

 

What are your currently writing? 

My new book Wait for Me is out now – a fiction based on a true story about reincarnation. My new series, Shadows in the Moonlight, comes out next July. I’m editing it now. It’s about a psychic medium who links into an earthbound spirit stuck in a house and slips back to Victorian times to find out what happened in the past in order to settle the spirit in the present. I’m excited to be starting a new series.