Today’s guest is author Lucy Steeds. Lucy won the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel ’The Artist’. It’s a subtle and really atmospheric book that takes readers into the household of a great reclusive master - Tartuffe. The story unfolds through the eyes of Joseph - a young English journalist who has the unique opportunity to write about Tartuffe so long as he sits for him as a model, and through Ettie - Tartuffe’s shy, elusive niece - whose own character and brilliance slowly begin to reveal the true heart of the story. As well as a brilliant character portrait, it goes to the heart of the ‘great master’ myth, erasure, and the ways that creative genius finds a way to show itself under tyrranical suppression.

Lucy and I jump straight into discussing the novel, and move on in the second half to discussing her own dream library hideaway. 

I hope you enjoy it.