The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook is the title of the second novel by Jersey author Sally Edmondson, written under her pen name Tessa Barrie. The Yorkshire-born writer spoke to TOM OGG about the origins of the book, achieving her lifelong dream of becoming a full-time writer – and how her anger over being made redundant spurred her into writing her debut novel

MANY are the authors who have used pen names when releasing their work to the public.
From Stephen King (Richard Bachman) and George Orwell (Eric Blair) to JK Rowling (Robert Galbraith), it is a common trend among writers both world-famous and less well-known.
Often, there will be an interesting or amusing backstory as to how and why they settled upon their chosen pseudonym, but few will have quite as memorable an origin story as that of Jersey author Sally Edmondson – or “Tessa Barrie” as she calls herself in print.
“I’ve always loved writing and, after I left school in Gloucestershire, I started writing a column for a local newspaper,” says the Yorkshire-born former finance worker, chatting during a visit to the JEP offices earlier this week.
“There was a problem, though, because my columns were all quite risqué – and I didn’t want my mum to know it was me who was writing them. So I came up with the name ‘Tessa Barrie’ because I had a dog called Tessa and because I’ve always been a closet Barry Manilow fan. I rather bastardised his name. And that’s how it came about.”
Such entertaining anecdotes are in keeping with Sally’s distinctive writing style, which is lighthearted, good-humoured and warm, as evidenced by her second novel, The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook, which is being launched in Jersey this weekend.
Taking place at the Harbour Gallery from 2pm to 4pm on Sunday, the book launch will include a well-stocked complimentary bar (“There will be Pinot Grigio, rosé, red wine, beer, soft drinks, nibbles”), and will see Sally and three other Jersey-based writers – Cate Hamilton, Chris Rive and Dreena Collins – reading extracts from the book.
“I would describe The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook as a quirky murder mystery,” says Sally. “I originally wrote it as a short story about a writer’s group in a very rural part of England, but I loved the characters so much that I decided to develop it and expand it into a novel.”
Several years in the making, the book – which this week received an ecstatic review in Literary Titan – was initially written as a satire, before Sally decided to take a more subtly comic approach.
The fast-paced narrative unfolds in the fictional community of Didsbrook (“Some authors do world building, but I prefer village building”) and the result is often laugh-out-loud funny. Take his piece of prose, spoken in the book by Detective Middleton: “A suspicious death is not something that happens every day in Didsbrook. In fact, from what I’ve heard, nothing much ever happens here at all. The unexplained death of Jocelyn Robertshaw in a village best known for Jocelyn Robertshaw warrants a high-profile investigation.” Almost every page boasts a similarly memorable line of dialogue or turn of phrase .
“Initially it was going to be more of an out-and-out farce,” says Sally. “But then I came up with my lead character and I found that, as her life progressed from one chapter to the next, the story became more and more complicated, and I just couldn’t have all this slapstick comedy going on around it.
“There is still plenty of humour in the book, but it now reads more like a lighthearted cosy mystery.”
Asked which authors have proven the biggest inspiration for her work, Sally replies: “That’s a tricky question. Sue Limb and Helen Fielding were my early reading go-to’s. Reading Sue Limb’s novels, and listening to her Radio 4 comedy series Gloomsbury, made me think that maybe I should focus on comedic writing. And Helen Fielding, after Bridget Jones, sealed the deal.
“More recently, I have motored through books by Lisa Jewell and Kerry Fisher. And a book I read, listened to on Audible and then binge-watched the TV series, all in the same week, was Holly Ringland’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.
“But I get most of my ideas from the news or from watching Harlan Coben movies,” she adds with a laugh.
The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook is notably different to Sally’s debut novel, Just Say It (2021), which was a family drama about a workaholic daughter who rebels against her mollycoddled mother (“There is a lot of humour but with a bittersweet storyline underpinning it all”), and which Sally initially started writing after being unexpectedly made redundant.
“I was made redundant just before the Covid pandemic hit – and I was furious,” she says. “I was so angry that I sat down and wrote my first book. I decided to put the anger to good use.
“The idea for Just Say It was one that I’d had in my head for a long time, but I’d always had the excuse of ‘ahh, I don’t have time to write it’. But then, suddenly, I didn’t have that excuse anymore. So I just got on with it. I was really upset and angry at the time but, in hindsight, [losing my job] was a blessing in disguise. It was the best thing that ever happened to me really.”
Now retired, Sally says she has belatedly become a “full-time writer”, a profession she has always wanted ever since she first started writing freelance pieces while still a teenager.
“I enjoyed it but they didn’t pay me very much – and so I decided to up sticks and move to Jersey,” she says. “It was 1981. I had great friends in the Island, and had stayed with them for several summer holidays over the years, and I had always wanted to live by the sea, so it was a no-brainer. Back then, I was pretty handy on the tennis court, played hockey and spent a considerable amount of time on the beach and in the sea.
“Today, my pace of life may be a little slower, but the beach is no less of a draw.”
It was shortly after first relocating to the Island that Sally began working for the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, as it was then known.
“I loved it. I was there for eight years. They had a little monthly magazine, it might have been quarterly, and I’d write pieces for that. Then I ended up in finance, as so many people over here do, but I never stopped writing, whether doing freelance work or just writing for my own pleasure.”
Rather less pleasurable have been the difficulties Sally faced in getting her second novel published, the longwinded process of which she describes as “a rocky road”.
“I was offered two book deals in 2024, which obviously I was very happy about,” she says. “Unfortunately, I picked the wrong one, and the publisher I signed with informed me in April that they were pushing back their entire 2025 publication list by 12 months, which meant that my own book wouldn’t come out until at least September 2026. Well, I’d been telling the whole world and his dog that it was ‘coming soon’.
“I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and so I opted to self-publish it, which obviously makes it harder to then find an audience. The irony is that, had I signed with the other publisher, the book would have been released four months ago. It was a hard lesson learned.”
Describing her debut novel as “a bit too long”, Sally says that The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook is a superior second attempt, thanks in part to the assistance of two “absolutely amazing” professional editors.
“I’m not a plotter,” she says. “I tried to be with this book, but I’m not one for sticking post-it notes all over the wall. I’m not that organised. [laughs] I think I’m getting a little better. There is certainly a lot of rewriting, and then rewriting again. I always want to get everything just right.
“I’m already two-thirds of the way through book number three,” she continues. “It is a psychological drama so I’m very much out of my comfort zone, but I’m too far gone now to stop. I’m too invested in the characters to stop writing them.
“I’m just going to keep on going as long as the inspiration is there. I do feel I need to write them quicker because, well, I’m not getting any younger. But it also acts as an incentive because I can’t afford to put it off – it’s now or never.”

*The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook by Tessa Barrie (Sally Edmondson) is available now on Amazon UK and at the Harbour Gallery in St Helier

*The book will be launched at the Harbour Gallery on Sunday 27 July, from 2pm to 4pm, with drinks and nibbles and readings from Sally, Cate Hamilton, Chris Rive and Dreena Collins

*For more on Tessa Barrie, visit tessabarrie.com

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