I love Emma, she was fantastic in The Crown. “Harry also fits the role really well because he is this sort of fantasy figure, incredibly handsome, everyone feels like they know him but he’s mysterious, so he brings that to it, which I think is a really good thing.

“The performances are really good,” says Bethan, adding she was particularly pleased with the casting of David Dawson as Patrick. At a time when being gay was still illegal, Tom introduces Patrick to Marion and the three share an intimate bond with the illicit love triangle playing out against the backdrop of 1950s Brighton. It’s not, however, the first time Bethan has seen the Michael Grandage-directed movie, in which Harry plays policeman Tom, who marries teacher Marion (played by Emma Corrin) despite being in love with a museum curator called Patrick (David Dawson). We’re chatting in the week leading up to My Policeman’s UK premiere at Festival Hall in London, which Bethan is attending with her mum – “obviously neither of us have been on a red carpet so it’s really exciting,” she beams. “I mean Harry Styles is playing the lead in the movie of my novel so that is incredible to me, it’s astonishing really,” Bethan smiles. Fast forward to 2022, however, and with hype surrounding another of the teen heartthrob’s films, Don’t Worry Darling, bubbling away, things are a little different.

“To be honest I didn’t really have a clear picture of what that meant – I mean I’m a middle-aged bookish type, so although I knew who Harry Styles was, I was a little hazy on the details,” she tells me of a meeting with the film’s producers three or four years ago.īack then, while Harry had been cast by Christopher Nolan in the 2017 film, Dunkirk, he was still better known as being one fifth of boyband, One Direction. When Bethan Roberts first found out Harry Styles was interested in playing one of the leads in the adaptation of her 2012 novel, My Policeman, her reaction was somewhat subdued. Brighton writer Bethan Roberts talks Rebecca Pitcairn about seeing her 2012 novel, My Policeman, played out on the big screen, with Harry Styles in the title role

My Policeman by Bethan Roberts