Paula Byrne, biographer and author, lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, US
WE moved from Oxford to Arizona in 2019, after my husband [Prof Sir Jonathan Bate] had finished eight years as provost of Worcester College, Oxford. Jonathan was approached by the president of Arizona State University (ASU) and it felt like an offer we couldn’t refuse—we have always loved the US.
As a writer, you can go anywhere and moving here has been really conducive to my work in ways I hadn’t expected, with all the wide open spaces and the desert landscape. If the environment isn’t right, I can’t write, so when we made the move to Arizona I did wonder: ‘How am I going to like this?’ After all, it’s the desert, far from Oxford with its libraries, history, and culture. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed the freedom of being away from it all. One day, I went for a swim and there was a snake in the pool, right in my face. I breathed: ‘Oh my
