Geri Halliwell-Horner greets me at her palatial north London home dressed head to toe in white, as has been her custom since sometime in 2019. Her living room is white, too: white curtains, cream sofas, even the floorboards are white-washed. Luckily, the Brit Awards adorning the white fireplace are silver. If they were black, I fear they may have been banished to the attic.
Over a snack of roast beef and a handful of curly fries (salvaged from her six-year-old son’s lunch), Geri appears unfazed by the public fascination with her adopted uniform. ‘It’s a curiosity,’ she concedes cheerily. What was the catalyst for her decision to forego colour? ‘I was at a moment in my life where I just needed simplicity,’ she says. ‘Sometimes the outside world can feel complicated, and it’s just one less thing to worry about. I was looking at a lot of men who wear the same thing over and over, and I realised they don’t need to spend more than five minutes thinking about their wardrobe. They’re buying themselves time. Also, if you only wear white then everything matches.’
The time Geri saved by not having to colour-coordinate her outfits has been put to impressive use. Her first Young Adult novel, eight years in the writing, has just become a New York Times best-seller. Rosie Frost And The Falcon Queen is a 451-page fantasy epic, in which a plucky ginger heroine embarks on a series of Hunger Games-esque challenges, under the tutelage of Anne Boleyn’s ghost. The Tudors are an obsession of Geri’s, and during the Spice Girls 2019 reunion tour, she reimagined her iconic Union Jack dress as a floor-length medieval gown – a development few could’ve predicted in 1997.
The book contains two obvious parallels with Geri’s own life. The first is a scene in which a mean-spirited teacher tells our heroine that she is ‘extremely fortunate to have ended up’ enrolled at a school for gifted students – as happened to Geri when she won a scholarship to Watford Grammar School for Girls and found herself surrounded by more affluent students. The second is when Rosie is called out of a lesson and told that her mother has been killed. Six months before joining the Spice Girls, Geri was studying for her English literature A level as a mature student when she was told that her father had died of a heart attack. She’s since spoken about how this sudden awareness of her own mortality – ‘death energy’ – powered her towards fame and fortune.
After three solo albums, a UN ambassadorship and now nine books, what drives her today? ‘It was a game changer for me when my need for approval was overtaken by asking myself how I can be of service,’ she says. ‘I felt that the world needed a new hero. Rosie Frost finds the courage she never knew that she had, and I want to inspire that in others.’
Geri pioneered the idea of Girl Power in the ’90s. Is the novel her way of delivering the same message to a younger generation? ‘I want to empower all people!’ she practically hoots. So what does Girl Power mean to her today? ‘It means equality for everyone, beyond gender, race, religion,’ she says. ‘I think there are different ways that a person can feel marginalised or boxed in, and one of them is age.’ At 51, Geri, unlike many celebrities of her era, is still recognisably herself, and rallies against being airbrushed on photoshoots. ‘I don’t have to pretend to be an age I’m not,’ she continues. ‘I can show that it’s actually OK to grow older, that ageing can be a positive thing. OK, I’m vain like the rest of us, but there are benefits to growing up. The fact that I get to be this age? Wow!’
By her mid-twenties, Geri had achieved more than most people could manage in several lifetimes. But her thirties were a struggle. ‘I found them so difficult,’ she says. ‘I felt so much pressure in so many areas where everyone was eclipsing me, and ticking boxes that I wasn’t – relationships, life goals. I felt like I was in no-man’s land. The ingénue had left the building, that twenties bravado had gone and I’d fallen down a few times. It wasn’t until I got to my forties that I found inner contentment. It happened bit by bit. I began to think, “You know what? I’m doing the best that I can.”’
We’re currently undergoing a cultural reckoning where the cruel treatment of many female stars in the ’90s and noughties – from Pamela Anderson to Britney Spears – is being reassessed. But Geri is surprisingly sanguine at the memories of that era. ‘I’ve always had the philosophy of turning poop into fertiliser,’ she says. ‘Any pain that I’ve experienced, I’ve used for creativity. I think you can learn from the past without dwelling on it.’ Suddenly, we’re back on the Tudors. ‘If you think that was a difficult time, look back at Anne Boleyn – a 30-year-old woman who was executed, leaving her three-year-old child behind. If she was alive in this modern-day era then Henry VIII would’ve been Me-Too’d.’
'It wasn't until my forties that I found inner contentment'
Geri is obviously very proud of her time as a Spice Girl. At one point, Rosie’s roommate declares, ‘The ’90s was the golden age of pop music… They don’t make songs like that anymore.’ She was moved by the adulation which greeted the Spice Girls’ sell-out 2019 reunion tour (minus Victoria) and is still close with all of the band. There are several WhatsApp groups, still going strong, she says. But she won’t be drawn by speculation over their next reunion, telling me, ‘When the time is right and definite, you’ll hear it from me.’
Besides, these days, she says, her focus has shifted. ‘I don’t see myself as a Mariah Carey but I do feel confident in writing – that’s always been my strength.’ Does she feel like more of a writer than a performer? ‘I would say so, yes. But writing can underpin anything. It’s storytelling – which can happen through books or music.’ She’s taken the unorthodox step of recording a soundtrack for her book. ‘I’ve never stopped writing music. When I was writing the novel, I was writing the soundtrack alongside it.’ Songs, Ghost In The House and Beautiful Life, can be accessed via a QR code.
In Molly Dineen’s critically acclaimed 1999 documentary Geri, the singer’s then assistant Tor Williamson speculates that Geri would ‘be happier if she went and lived on a farm with a husband and two kids. But it’s not going to happen.’ Today, Geri is married to F1 team boss Christian Horner, has two children (plus a step-daughter), and owns an Oxfordshire country pile replete with horses, goats and chickens. But rather than retreating into domesticity, Geri feels energised. She’s unjaded for a celebrity of 27 years and has maintained a curiosity about the world (not to mention the Tudors) absent in many of her contemporaries.
Next up, she’s considering an Oxford degree in history. ‘I think it’s all about chapters,’ she says. ‘In my younger days, I really felt that to be an artist you needed to be in emotional starvation. I thought being discontent would help me write.’ Now, she’s happy being happy. ‘I’m not perfect, I don’t have all the answers, but this is me.’
‘Rosie Frost And The Falcon Queen’ by Geri Halliwell-Horner is available now.
AmazonPhotographer: Connor Langford; Stylist: Martha Ward; Hair: Gareth Bromell at A-frame Agency using Hair Rituals by Sisley Paris; Make-up: Charlotte Reid at One Represents using Charlotte Tilbury; Nails: Lucy Tucker at A-frame Agency using Kiss Nails; Lighting Assistant: Andrew Goss; Digi Op: Georgia Shane; Stylist’s Assistants: Gavi Weiss; Joey Yip; Style Intern: Alex Field.