On a recent visit to Gloucester I could not resist popping into a quaint little shop/museum on a side street near the Cathedral. The House of the Tailor of Gloucester is the setting for Beatrix Potter’s charming children’s tale, and is now a wonderful shop and museum dedicated to the great English writer’s works. I’ve always admired her beautiful illustration style and the simplicity of her stories, and I was delighted to buy there a copy of the 2006 film Miss Potter, which tells her story.

I knew nothing of Beatrix’s past, or the film, but was drawn to the movie for the fact it covers two subjects close to my heart: love and writing (and the love of writing!).

Oh what a lovely, heart-warming, inspiring film. Quintessentially English, despite American Renee Zellweger playing the eponymous heroine. The settings are wonderful – I love the open spaces of the Lake District in particular. The love story is so touching, and vivid. Doesn’t every woman who writes dream of meeting a man who has such faith in her abilities?

I find myself most inspired by Beatrix Potter’s life – her strength and courage as a woman, her determination to be true to herself and to pursue her writing ambitions, her independence, her creativity. This is a woman who found fame and fortune as a result of her writing at a time when women writers were rare indeed, much less successful. And what touched me most is what Beatrix did with the fruits of her labour – investing her royalty proceeds into preserving one of England’s most beautiful places.

It’s a film I highly recommend to fellow female writers. But perhaps it is worth mentioning one moment in Beatrix’s story that could serve to further inspire – although the film presents the story as Beatrix getting a publishing contract for her first book The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and building from there, in fact Beatrix independently published that first book before it was picked up by a publisher. This was a woman who would not take no for an answer: a role model for us all!