'Memory is what most of us want, to be remembered by those we love'

As Dunmore, 65, writes in an Afterword to this life-enhancing, gorgeously sensual novel, “I suppose that a writer’s creative self must have access to knowledge of which the conscious mind and the emotions are still ignorant, and that a novel written at such a time, under such a growing shadow, cannot help being full of sharper light, rather as a landscape becomes brilliantly distinct in the last sunlight before a storm.”

She tells me: “Whenever I’m writing a novel it tends to scoop up everything that is happening around me anyway.”

When I visit her and her husband, Frank, with whom she has two grown-up daughters and a stepson, in their peaceful, book-and-flower-filled home, with its dizzying views of Bristol’s Floating Marina far below, there is no sunlight. Instead, there is a blanket of murky mist as Storm Doris blows in.

Over coffee, we talk about that shadow looming over what is left of her own life, what she will leave behind and how so many people’s lives are marked by scant traces of their existence since we are all temporary, fleeting presences. "Women's lives, in particular, remain largely unrecorded. But did they not shape the future? Through their existence, their words and acts, their gestures, jokes, caresses, strength and courage – and through the harms they did as well – they changed the lives around them and formed the lives of their descendants." This is why she wanted to show in the character of Lizzie the profound influence of her mother, Julia, although not one word of her writing survives.

It is an emotional conversation but it is full of laughter, too, since Dunmore, despite her frailty, is a bringer of joy as well as profound sadness. Anyone who has read and loved her work will already know this, from her prizewinning debut novel, Zennor in Darkness, exploring her literary hero D H Lawrence’s expulsion from Cornwall on suspicion of spying during the First World War to her brilliantly atmospheric bestseller, The Siege, set during the Siege of Leningrad. The latter was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize.

It is clear that Dunmore’s lively spirit is undimmed – she has, after all, written more than 50 books and is completing a poetry collection and writing short prose pieces while tinkering with a new work of fiction, although she tires easily. “I flag,” she apologises. Still, she speaks passionately about Birdcage Walk and is sorry that today’s atrocious weather means that I am unable to visit the eponymous, nearby Clifton village graveyard from which her novel takes its title.

Yorkshire-born and educated at York University, where she read English, Dunmore has been walking through the ruins and battered gravestones of Birdcage Walk since she was a girl. “It’s a very potent place,” she says. Now, she thinks of the inhabitants of those graves with fellow feeling. “Once they were eagerly alive, once they were mourned. Now they have become part of the endless silence which surrounds our brief lives.”

Set in Bristol in 1792, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Birdcage Walk deals with the transitory nature of existence and another of Dunmore’s literary preoccupations: the impact of the past on the present.

The story centres on Lizzie, the tough, passionate, often frighteningly innocent daughter of renowned radical writer Julia Fawkes. Lizzie is married to John Diner Tredevant, “a builder and a destroyer”. He is one of the most disturbing characters, says Dunmore, that she’s ever written. His powerful, persuasive presence casts a dark cloud over the novel as he labours to create a magnificent terrace above the perilous 200-foot drop of the Avon Gorge.

Why was Dunmore so attracted to this turbulent period of social and political upheaval?

“I put an enormous amount of energy into it, because the period interests me so much. I like the idea of tumult, also the idea that people do not know what is going to happen. It is all in the present tense for them. There are echoes between the French Revolution and what is happening in their lives and what is happening here now..

“At that time there was a building boom in Bristol – we’re all still obsessed with property – and people were piling money in, speculating and getting caught in the bubble. They were destroyed economically. We believe it can’t go wrong – 200 years ago people believed the same, but it did. Which led to a remarkable sight. People describe looking at the landscape, at these half-built houses like teeth that had not erupted properly or as if there had been a plague or a war. Of course, in a way there had been. I have this strong sense of the past flowing towards the present, although it’s always a mistake to think of the past as predictable. It isn’t.”

She pauses before continuing: “Building is such a symbol of how human beings were living at that time. The idea of building a terrace over the Gorge – they are stunning properties now, extraordinary feats of building and engineering and imagination. It pleases me that people can read the book, then wander along those terraces. I wanted to write about those hard-headed people for whom it all went wrong as well as this group of idealists and radicals who live by ideas but who are a bit ridiculous too, absurdly endearing in a way, with their ferocious energy and dynamism. There was so much political anxiety, the fear that there would be a revolution.

“I found [the story] quite harsh because it tells of murder and violence yet it was exciting to write. But then it’s also a book about the deep, deep attachment of a mother-daughter relationship. I really wanted that to be a force in the novel along with the way our lives dissolve into the earth. All those people whose voices have not echoed through time and whose many struggles and passions have vanished from history.”

Lost lives have always intrigued her, from The Siege, with its focus on a key historical event, to Exposure, her last book, about the Cold War, spying and deception. “It’s a theme and a love. It’s almost like uncovering a mosaic that has been under layers of dirt for a long, long time. It’s as if you are in a field, then find underneath it this extraordinary image – the colour, the complexity, the brilliance, the sophistication. It’s just a question of taking away the dirt and uncovering the vividness that lies beneath.”

There is also the fact that life could be snuffed out at any moment. “Today, we are in denial about death, less honest than people in the past who knew it was ever present. One thing I have realised coming to the end of my life – it’s still a strange thing to say, a shock – is contemplating my own absence as we all have to, realising that we are all temporary creatures. I suppose I have always lived my life as most of us do thinking of this vague, formless future going on and on, which is a bit ridiculous. Suddenly, I’m having to think that is not the case.

“Memory is what most of us want, to remain in memory, to be remembered by those we love. Yes, I have written many books but I think through exploring Julia’s writing, none of which has been preserved, apart from a scrap, I am thinking about my own writing. Most people’s books don’t last. Will there be a little trace of me? Does that even matter? It is the doing of it that matters. We can’t be thinking, ‘Am I going to leave a memorial?’ We don’t have that right. Death is a difficult thing to come to terms with. We love life, we love the present moment and it’s very hard to imagine that ending. I suspect we are not even equipped for it.

“I hope, however, that people will find a great love of life in Birdcage Walk, the wonderful sweetness of everyday life. Being happy, enjoying life and how very precious it is.”

Birdcage Walk, by Helen Dunmore, Hutchinson, £18.99.