A master of moral complexity, Sarah Perry spent her childhood in a strict Baptist community, removed from contemporary culture and steeped in Old English literature and the King James Bible. The upbringing has unsurprisingly deeply influenced her writing style, described as making the reader “alive to the strangeness of the world and of our history” (The DailyTelegraph). The author of three novels, including the bestselling 2017 British Book Awards Book of the Year The Essex Serpent, and Melmoth, Perry talks with Noelle McCarthy on harnessing the power of myth, religion and mystery.