It's Widdecombe fair

ANN Widdecombe is not on the hustings, nor on ministerial duty. Nevertheless, the robust Conservative MP is here, there and everywhere in the cause of her second novel. In York last Thursday, she squeezed in a literary luncheon; a 45-minute interview with the Evening Press at the Dean Court Hotel (unlike television inquisitor Louis Theroux, yours truly managed to share a bedroom with Miss Widdecombe); a late-afternoon visit to WH Smith and an evening talk, reading and book-signing session at Borders.

No longer a Shadow Minister, and unburdened by the red boxes of ministerial duty, Ann Widdecombe is finding time at 54 to enjoy writing, her new addition to reading and researching Charles II's escape in her list of recreations in Dod's Parliamentary Companion 2002.

This month, Weidenfeld & Nicolson has published An Act Of Treachery, a novel set in the Second World War in occupied France where Parisian convent girl Catherine Dessin falls in doomed love with a married German officer. It is a studious and emotionally exploratory work, perceptive in its appraisal of human character, and forward thinking - certainly out of step with the Tory manifesto for the 2001 General Election - in its espousal of a common understanding in Europe.

Literary luncheon over, Miss Widdecombe enters the hotel foyer in a sensible summery dress for a warm summer's day. She is shorter still than expected, not as matronly of build, freckled, with the brisk, businesslike manner of an old-school headmistress. No offer comes to call her Ann, but then why should it, as we take the lift to her room.

Preliminary niceties over - "lovely day, isn't it"; "no, sorry, no Yorkshire family connections" - and talk turns sprightly to the art of writing, when and how. She writes her novels on a laptop on long train journeys and in Singapore, on visits to her old Chinese nanny, her "armour" from her childhood days in the 1950s.

"You can 'disappear' from the train into your own world when you write, and that's what I do," says Miss Widdecombe, who likes to travel first-class. "I always travel that way: you get a lot of space to write in and to think in."

The sleeve for An Act Of Treachery reveals Ann Widdecombe has long had ambitions to write novels, held in check by the demands of her political career. "I always knew I wanted to do it. I wrote as a child; I wrote as a teenager, and I always promised I would write in my spare time but that was always taken up with politics, politics and more politics, until we lost the Election," she says.

She greeted the Conservative defeat in 1997 after 18 years in government with "huge relief". "I don't know if that was the general feeling among her ministerial colleagues because most of them went on to being Opposition spokesmen. But I lost the habits of government much more quickly."

That is not to suggest Miss Widdecombe has taken her eye off the political pinball machine. While she has no wish for an immediate return to high office - "not for at least a few years" - she would like to continue being an MP, serving her Kent constituency with customary zeal.

"I can now cover as many subjects as I like, and no longer only the four in my brief and I can do a lot more for my constituency - and, of course, I have an elderly mother to look after too," she says.

She brings the same purposeful stride to her writing as she does to all aspects of her life, not least taking reviews seriously. "I do read them, every single one," she says. "The reviews for The Clematis Tree her first novel were very mixed, some good, some bad, and I noticed a phenomenon; those who reviewed the book reviewed it quite favourably; those who reviewed me reviewed it quite badly."

She has made changes "but not a lot" in her writing style for novel number two. "One reviewer said there were too many adverbs in The Clematis Tree, so there are fewer this time," says Miss Widdecombe.

While The Sunday Times review saw fit to suggest her writing on sexual matters was the stuff of Enid Blyton rather than Colette, her insight into behaviour and moral dilemmas has rightly won her praise. "Human life does not fall into neat brackets: you can have very good people doing quite bad things - and that certainly does apply to politics as well as love," she says.

Taking The Sunday Times criticism on the chin, she adds: "You do need a bit of life's experiences to write this book, and in a way it was quite difficult because I had to see it through Catherine's teenage eyes, and she was immature and innocent, and not only sexually but in the ways of the world."

Influenced in her younger days by the works of Pamela Hansford Johnson and CP Snow, she now enjoys the novels of Joanna Trollope and Sebastian Faulks and mentions Giles Waterfield's debut, The Long Afternoon, in despatches. While she "doesn't get time to read a lot", she will be taking Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette and Ruth Rendall's Adam And Eve And Pinch Me on holiday, but in the back of her mind will be the December deadline for her third novel.

She is a third of the way through writing The Idealist, the story of an African President and British Prime Minster. "The political theme is in the background," says Miss Widdecombe, countering any suggestion that she has retreated to familiar territory for inspiration. "The book is really about the journey of the two men and the question of whether they can retain the very strong ideals they have had in their lives."

A busy autumn is ahead: the return to the House after the summer recess, the novel to finish and the Widdecombe roadshow otherwise known as An Evening With Ann Widdecombe. "It's a celebrity circus but a celebrity circus with a purpose," she says. "There's a cult of celebrity in this country and you either go with it or you resent it and do nothing. I use it, just as I was one of the first MPs to have my own website, which I reckon in ten years' time will be the main means of communication with voters."

There is a lightening of mood as the interview progresses, matching the lightening of hair that has turned Ann Widdecombe from dark to bordering on blonde. "You get a lot more compliments if you're blonde," she says. "But it wasn't a sudden thing. I'd been doing it over a course of 18 months - but your profession is so lazy. Even when it was light brown, they were still talking about my black hair, because they hadn't bothered to look!" Catherine Dessin, the heroine of her new novel has a golden mane, but Widdecombe's change of look will not stretch that far. "I haven't got long blond hair nor am I ever likely to." Maybe not, but who could have predicted Ann Widdecombe would blonde up or write a passionate novel?

Fact file:

Name: Ann Noreen Widdecombe

Occupation: Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald, Kent, and novelist

Born: October 4 1947. Daughter of late James Murray Widdecombe CB OBE, who served in Admiralty and was Director General in Ministry of Defence

Lives in: London and Kent village of Sutton Valence

Education: Royal Naval School, Singapore; La Sainte Union Convent, Bath; University of Birmingham (BA Hons Latin, 1969); Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (BA Hons, philosophy, politics and economics, 1972, MA)

Pre-Parliament: Marketing, for Unilever, 1973-1975; senior administrator, London University, 1975-1987; councillor, Runnymede District Council, 1976-78

First elected to House of Commons: Maidstone, 1987. Earlier contested Burnley, 1979, Plymouth Devonport, 1983.

Parliamentary peaks: Minister of State, 1994-1997; Shadow Secretary of State, 1998-1999, Shadow Home Secretary, 1999-2001

Special parliamentary interests: Abortion, health, defence, prisons

Awards: The Spectator's Minister of the Year, 1996; Talk Radio, Straight Talker of the Year, 1997

Publications: A Layman's Guide To Defence, 1984; Outspoken And Inspired, 1999; The Clematis Tree, novel, 2000

Recreations: Reading; researching Charles II's escape, writing

Why in news: On book tour publicising second novel, An Act Of Treachery, published this month by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in hardback at £12.99.

Updated: 08:55 Wednesday, July 31, 2002