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The Essex Serpent author's pride at 'beautiful and ancient Essex'

Getty Images Sarah PerryGetty Images
Sarah Perry grew up in Essex and set The Essex Serpent in a fictional coastal village

The author of The Essex Serpent has spoken of her "mischievous pride" at how the book and new TV series reveals Essex as "beautiful and ancient".

Sarah Perry's award-winning novel has been turned into a six-part series starring Marvel actor Tom Hiddleston and Homeland's Claire Danes.

It was shot in Mersea Island, Maldon and Alresford Creek in coastal Essex.

Ms Perry said the book and Apple TV+ series show "a version of Essex that is beyond the mockery we're all used to".

Apple TV Tom Hiddleston and Claire DanesApple TV
Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston's characters strike up an intense relationship

The novel is set in the late Victorian era and tells the story of a coastal village terrified by a mythical sea creature.

Hiddleston plays the village vicar, while Danes is London widow and palaeontologist Cora Seabourne, who investigates reports of the serpent after an earthquake dislodged fossils.

Geograph/Trevor Harris Alresford CreekGeograph/Trevor Harris
Ms Perry has "a mischievous pride pride in presenting to to the whole world, first through the book and then through the TV series, a version of Essex that is kind of beyond the mockery that we're all used to"

Ms Perry, who was born and brought up in Chelmsford, said: "Filming took place at Mersea Island which is - as people probably know - cut off from the Essex mainland by a causeway that is said to be haunted by a Roman centurion and is a very eerie place and Alresford Creek which has these very serpentine, weird sinuous marshes.

"They've done a very good job of showing my Essex, which is this incredibly ancient, liminal landscape that those of us who are from Essex are very proud of, but nobody else seems to know about.

"I feel a great sense of pride as an Essex girl in reanimating the coastline and the nature of Essex, so the novel contains some jokes about Essex girls that are for quite a niche audience - and the TV series maintains that."

British Library Essex SerpentBritish Library
The myth of a 9ft (2.7m) snake which terrorised cattle in Essex had been told for centuries, first surfacing in a 1669 pamphlet

Her only stipulations to the production company were for the series to have "a proper gothic eerie sensibility" and for her Victorian women characters to be portrayed as "vital and vibrant and educated and alive".

The author, who now lives in Norwich, was happy with the "brilliant" script - and was an extra on the series.

She was so moved after watching the series "that I threw my coat over my head and cried".

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