IT’S almost three decades since Joanna Trollope’s first contemporary novels, The Choir, A Village Affair, A Passionate Man and The Rector’s Wife first hit the book stands to great acclaim, marking her out as one of our most popular writers.

And on Saturday, March 4 she’ll be at the Queen’s Hall in Hexham to talk about what is, unbelievably, her 20th book.

City of Friends tells the story of four women who met at university and have gone on to have high-flying careers in the Square Mile.

It begins with one of the four, Stacey, losing her job and the fall-out this creates in her own family and amongst her friendship group. It goes on to question whether it really is possible to ‘have it all’.

Like most of Joanna’s books, it’s as much a social commentary – albeit firmly focused on the middle classes – as it is a story of female friendship.

Joanna says she was drawn to write about the world of work as it’s a rarely tackled subject in literature.

“I’m not sure I know another novel about women and work,” she says. “There is endless fiction about romantic love and relationships and nothing on the way women work.

“For my generation, to work full time – as I have – is quite rare; for my daughters’ generation it’s not at all rare and my grand-daughters’ generation would not think about anything other than working.

“I wanted to explore that aspect of women’s lives, although I have to say that I don’t think there’s a more demanding or harder task than running a house or bringing up the next generation, and I think there should be a sisterly bond whatever we decide to do.”

Joanna describes herself as ‘an old fashioned feminist’.

Born in the Cotswolds in 1943, she won a scholarship to Oxford University to read English Literature.

“When I went up to university there were seven men to every one woman,” she says.

“The very first political march I went on was in my first term in October 1962 about the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs. The world looked very different from a female perspective in 1962.

“Now I have two highly accomplished working daughters – one a barrister and the other working in the NGO world. The characters in the novel are of my daughters’ generation (who are in their forties).”

Joanna is known for her meticulous research and says she spent a good three months talking to female executives in Canary Wharf.

“I must have interviewed 14 or 15 very high-flying women,” she said.

They were very happy to open up to her. “Because I was a novelist – if I had been a journalist they would not have. A lot said how enormously supportive their male colleagues had been in their progress up the ladder, but they are careful to stay under the radar, otherwise they are judged on their marital status, on their make-up, their shoes, their clothing.”

Their reticence is understandable when you reflect on the kind of media scrutiny so-called ‘superwoman’ Nicola Horlick was subjected to for successfully pursuing her City career whilst bringing up six children.

Joanne continues: “In the book, the character of Gaby (MD of the investment banking division of a huge global bank) is incredibly supportive of the junior members of her team.

“That’s what I discovered – that for most of them, their junior teams were in a way like extra children.”

Understandably, the women coming up through the ranks appreciated having “a woman boss who understood the need for having a rounded life, with relationships and family given their due importance.”

And Joanna believes that things can only get better for gender equality as long as women have such role models and are no longer a rarity in once traditional male bastions like the City.

“Mrs Thatcher was always accused of not helping other women, but I think there were very few other women around to help,” Joanna says. “So however much you disagreed with her, it’s not quite fair to chuck that rock at her.”

Joanna observes that we are still in the midst of what has been a huge cultural shift for women. Her late mother was born in 1919, the year after women got the conditional vote.

“We have come a long way, but it doesn’t mean we haven’t got to keep fighting.”

However she believes men are part of that struggle.

“I think society still expects women to do all the human stuff,” she says. Hence, the character of Stacey in the book is made redundant after asking to work flexibly so she can care for her mum who has vascular dementia.

“But I have to say, you see a generation changing. Now if ever I hear a man bragging that they have never changed a nappy, I tell them that’s nothing to be proud of any more. My sons-in-law are as hands on with their children as my daughters.”

Nappy changing aside, feminism has given men opportunities that were once women’s preserve. “Young men will often say that they really, really want a family and society doesn’t tell them that they are letting maleness down by saying so.

“I think that there are an enormous number of men who don’t want to be sallying forth from the cave and slaying mammoth – they may want to be at home. And society is broadening very slowly to enable men to have as many choices as women. When I say I am an old fashioned feminist, what I am really for is equality of opportunity for everybody.”

Ticket holders for next Saturday's event are obviously in for some lively debate and Joanna says she can’t wait to meet her Tynedale readers.

“I am so excited. I have never been to Hexham, so I am really thrilled. I know Holy Island and Bamburgh but I have never properly been inland, and walking Hadrian’s Wall is on my bucket list.”

Who knows, perhaps she will even stumble across new material on her travels North. “I am riveted by human behaviour,” she says. “It’s one of the great joys of public transport for me! When people say to me, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’, I say that as long as human beings go on behaving as they behave, I won’t run out of ideas.”