Poet turned thriller writer Sophie Hannah revealed that she sets her hit mystery novels in Devizes.

Although the small market town is not named, Ms Hannah told an audience at the town hall on Saturday that she mentally places the action in her books in Devizes.

She said: “All my books are set in a fictional English town that in my mind is Devizes.

“As you may know I happen to live in the north of England and many people still have the image of the north being all flat caps and whippets.

“Actually I’m quite posh. I even drink Earl Grey tea. I’ve been here quite a lot over the years. I love the place. It is so different from anywhere else I’ve ever been.

“I haven’t named the town as Devizes because that would have involved getting out street maps and looking up directories.”

In fact, it is eight years since Ms Hannah last visited Devizes and a lot has happened in that time.

She has had two children, for one thing, and it was the birth of her first child that sparked the idea for her first thriller, Little Face.

She said: “I was in hospital for a week trying to have my first child and I didn’t sleep properly for three days. So when the baby finally arrived, I just wanted the nurses to take it away so I could sleep.”

But when she went to the nursery to retrieve her child, she inadvertently picked up the wrong baby. It was a momentary mistake and she was soon pointed to the right one.

But it gave her the seed of an idea for a thriller. She said: “What would happen if my husband turned up and I said, this is not our baby? Would he believe me?”

Of course, she didn’t do it, but it led to her writing Little Face and subsequently Hurting Distance, The Point of Rescue, The Other Half Lives and, soon to be completed, A Room Swept White.

It is a million miles from her wryly humorous verse, with which she delighted her audience at the beginning and end of her performance.