Andrew Liddle sits down with Mark Harland whose latest book answers the questions his readers have been asking …

Hot off the press is The New Hotel, Scarbados, the eagerly-awaited third volume of Mark Harland’s compelling tale of a Hull family which refuses to be beaten by the twin adversaries of lockdown and redundancy. Full of Yorkshire grit and determination they buy an hotel on the Yorkshire coast and, finally, make a go of it, but not without many trials and tribulations on the way.

To the delight of the books’ legions of fans, it completes the Scarbados Trilogy, which began eighteen months ago and has been gaining in popularity ever since, even as far away as Australia. A recent interview that Mark gave to BBC radio, revealed the possibility of a television adaptation under consideration - now that the big questions raised by the first 2 books have been answered - and so poignantly.

“So many readers have suggested to me it would make an ideal television series,” he tells me over lunch at his favourite local haunt, Cafe 7, in York Place, in the town where he spent some of his formative years and which he now calls home.

I go so far as to say it seems tailor-made for adaptation to the screen for a wide and diverse family audience and he smiles and waves away the compliment.

The urbane and well-travelled author, a great follower of the county cricket team, a Life Member of the Scarborough Cricket Club - and fan of Spurs - was born in Malta, where his father was an Admiralty Radio Officer. Mark later retired to Scarborough (where he had received much of his early education), after spells living and working abroad for many years in banking and finance.

Some of his overseas experiences, notably in Hong Kong, formed the basis of his earlier novels, which he began writing in 2005 purely as a hobby. The Takeaway Trilogy was inspired by two novels from his favourite author James Clavell – Tai-Pan and Noble House – and by the years his family spent in Hong Kong. “My paternal grandfather was a Royal Navy Electrical Artificer in the Territory before the First World War and regaled me in my youth with many tales of derring-do in the South China Sea,” he explains.

The MPs’ expenses’ scandal inspired Mark to pen the satirical Your Country Needs You, in which Queen Elizabeth II dismissed all her MPs and ordered the Head of the Civil Service to organise a national lottery to select their replacements at random – like Premium Bond winners. The book was apparently banned in the Palace of Westminster and snubbed by the mainstream media. “I don’t think the book is any less relevant now than it was then,” he grins.

A time of reflection and enforced isolation during the Covid lockdown gave Mark the opportunity to embark on a change of direction as a writer. Once the idea was born, he wrote the first book at fever pitch, in a matter of 57 days, while the world was locked down. Of course, the Covid pandemic had a dreadful impact on international travel which all but ground to a halt for a year.

One of the casualties was the Hull-to-Belgium ferry service across the North Sea. The route was suspended and eventually axed altogether. Dozens of Hull-based workers were made redundant, including the central character of the trilogy, Peter Fishburn. A senior steward on the car ferry Pride of Bruges for twenty years, he was too young to retire and clearly needed to provide for his wife and three children. Prospects of finding employment in his native town were not high.

It would be a shame to reveal too much for those who have yet to discover the pleasures of these warm-hearted, immensely readable books, which blend occasional sadness and much humour. Each is packed full of human drama and positively bursting at the seams with the sort of everyday fears and mini crises we all experience - more than ever during the early days of Covid - and the compensatory comforts we find elsewhere, often in small things.

Suffice it to say, as luck would have it his wife, Mandy unexpectedly comes into money, making it possible for the family (and their two loveable labradoodles) to buy the run-down Wendover Hotel near Peasholm Park, and embark on a new adventure. What Peter gains, however, in making a move mostly instigated by his wife - and a bit of a surprise to him - he loses, you might think, in having to close down his amatory affairs on the continent.

The family’s arrival in Scarborough, around Christmas, is ominously heralded by a terrific storm, but gradually with hard work and not without a few tears, they get the newly-renamed Hotel Scarbados to take off. This, as they discover, is its third moniker. It was previously the Hotel Koala, named and run by a family from the Australian state of Victoria.

Things have moved far and fast by the time the sequel swings into gear and they have relocated to a much bigger premises, the eponymous Hotel Koala. It seems they’ve been successful enough to have arch rivals, Best Eastern Hotels, keeping a predatory eye on them. One of its directors, Pamela Hesketh, seems to be making rather too much of a play for the newly-divorced Peter, much to the dismay of daughter Millie.

Each newly-introduced character is roundly delineated, to the point we feel we know them and we take an interest in their development. His son, Jamie, for instance, is by now an award-winning chef and plans are being laid to open his own restaurant, the Four Season, within the Hotel itself, perhaps together with the personable Chloe, his new girlfriend.

It’s here that the modern love interest - ideal for TV - hots up. Across the other side of the North Sea, the lovely Stephanie van Gelder has discovered Peter's whereabouts and the news that they have a love-child, Natalie, now ten years old, comes as something of a shock to him - as does the possibility of Mandy attempting a comeback now her spell of globetrotting has come to an end.

To know how the saga plays out you must read the latest book. You won’t be disappointed. It opens with Peter nervously awaiting the arrival in London of Stephanie and Natalie. We share his nerves and are caught up by the romantic interest of whether the two adults can make their previous relationship permanent - and if so how would all the other parties react to what would be a sensational turn of events. We are of course also much taken by the younger generations’ own burgeoning romantic relationships and bonding.

Perfectly paced, full of surprises,with not a single scene or plot point without narrative purpose, coupled with loveable and plucky characters (and canines), all highly relatable, the book takes us on a roller-coaster ride where things could go wrong but comfortingly don’t. The narrative arc always seems to be heading in what the chic flick writers call the ‘definitely maybe’ territory but there is a good deal of realistic portrayal of social life, evolving within contemporary Britain. It is above all a love letter to Scarborough.

He describes his chosen genre as “contemporary family fiction”, in a style calculated to appeal to a wide potential readership and “should hold no fear for parents of teens or even younger children”.

A spin-off from the Scarbados Trilogy is happily already in the pipeline …