I’m a people-watcher. Always have been.

I love nothing better than sitting in coffee shops, book in hand, pretending to read when, in fact, I’m observing the people around me over the top of the pages. When I was little, I would make up stories about the people I saw, imagining what their lives were like. Were they happy with life, or dissatisfied? What were their secret ambitions? Did they have ordinary jobs or were they superheroes in disguise?

As a novelist, I ‘collect’ people – faces, fragments of overheard conversations and fanciful notions of who they really are. Sometimes, these details are offered to me – it’s amazing what people tell you when they know you’re a writer – but more often than not it’s the tiny, shiny scraps of detail that catch my eye like a sliver of tin foil to a passing magpie.

Most of the time, I don’t know whether my impressions of the people I observe are anywhere near the truth. But occasionally I will hear or read something about someone’s life that inspires me far more than anything I could imagine. There are some stories that deserve to be told just as they are.

So the serendipitous discovery that my 26 Treasure was a painting of a family was a thrilling one for me. The miniature portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family, contained within an exquisite walnut cabinet, seemed like the perfect choice for a self-confessed people-watcher. An entire gathering of faces to dream over – what a gift!

The first thing that struck me about the portrait was how informal it felt, especially given the time it was painted. It had the feeling of a stolen snapshot: most of the figures are not looking directly at the artist; some have surprisingly unguarded expressions and an onlooker peeks from behind a curtain. It was almost as though the portrait captured a moment we weren’t supposed to see.

Over the days and weeks that followed, I let my imagination wander around Sir Thomas More’s family in that room, becoming familiar with each face, object and detail. By the time I met the real portrait in the British Galleries at the V&A, I had already concocted several theories about the sitters. And then the truth of their lives broke into my imaginings.

I had assumed that the portrait was painted with all the featured figures present at one time. But this was not the case: in reality the miniature is a visual representation of a five-generation family tree. The youngest family members are painted as the oldest in the group, while their ancestors smile out with young eyes. Then there were the facts about the family: their learnedness, acknowledged across the land, male and female scholars recognised; their wealth and influence, displayed in the items around the room, expensive books and rich attire – and lost with an accusation of treason; and their faith – the bond that united them and, ultimately, led to their fall from grace at Henry VIII’s court. The surviving family members who commissioned the portrait intended it as a memento mori – for future generations to remember who the Mores were and what they stood for.

These details threw me for a while. My vain imaginings were revealed as pale imitations when placed beside the real article, like a celebrity standing next to their Madame Tussaud’s waxwork. A classic battle of fact versus fiction. It was almost as though I was scared to touch the memory of this family that had endured so much as a result of one man’s decision to defy his King. Consequently, my first attempt at the sixty-two words was a cautious, respectful but, ultimately, shallow reflection of my own hang-ups. It looked good on paper, but did little more than embellish the facts displayed alongside the miniature in the museum.

Thankfully, Rob Self-Pierson (my 26 Treasures editor) gave me the opportunity to delve a little deeper.

When I reassessed what I’d written, my initial impression returned and I once again allowed myself to dream about the family. History books only record the pertinent facts – so what else about this family could I record? So I began to imagine the everyday More family life. What did they fight over, laugh about and share? What were the in-jokes and embarrassing family stories? Historical fact aside, how would the family have interacted with one another?

My resulting sixty-two words are a combination of the facts I learned at the V&A and the imagined everyday workings of a complex family – a ‘behind-closed-doors’ snapshot of an extraordinary group of people.

It has been a privilege to people-watch the More family and dream about their everyday lives. But I wonder: what would they think if they could see me peeking over the pages of the history at them?