‘I think about the moment my name arrived whenever I’m talking about how writing is always a mix of memory and imagination.’

I’m the only Knightley in my family. 

I was walking around WHSmith in my hometown in approximately 1998 when RS Knightley first appeared in my thoughts. It turned up fully formed, with the clarity and strength of a memory. I didn’t know what it was doing there, but I sensed it belonged. A pen name, I thought. Once I get something published for it to appear on.

RS Knightley only appeared twice as a pen name, before I returned to what by then was the truth: Rachel Knightley. The RS probably came from RS Thomas, part of my GCSE and A Level poetry anthologies; I think the S was also for my mother’s middle name, as I was giving up the surname we’d kept after my parents’ divorce. The Knightley part definitely came from Emma (I was always more of a Mr Knightley than a Mr Darcy kinda girl). 

But as with many essentially positive changes in my life, I’m not sure I’d have got around to changing it at all if a very unpleasant experience associated with its initial owner hadn’t occurred a year or two later. But the clarity of doing it when I needed to built on a preexisting feeling, a story I could already feel unfolding even if I hadn’t predicted the plot.

I think about the moment my name arrived whenever I’m talking about how writing is always a mix of memory and imagination. Even a memoir or autobiography, even a police statement, is our version of events, told as truthfully as we can but inevitably coloured by our interests, expertise and identity. An architect would pick up different details about a room than an interior designer; a botanist would experience a field differently to a farmer. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s being human. Which is what our reader is here for.

Not all ideas arrive like that, but when they do, we know about it. Sometimes they’re so clear that (like Paul McCartney and the melody for Yesterday) we convince ourselves we are remembering rather than realising. That’s how it felt when I thought of what’s now the annual Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support. It’s also what happened with what is now, legally, my name. It was a real thing already, waiting in my head. It had already chosen me. Reality just needed to catch up. 

Over twenty years later (or, as I write this, three weeks ago), I was in the studio talking to the vocalist, guitarist/drummer, and recording engineer I was working with about how to credit the EP we were making. I was a songwriter but not performing, so it didn’t feel right to me to appear as a solo artist.

I was already aware of becoming more versions of the multitudes I contain, growing into myself, coming back to wider musical training with the goal of more versions of myself being involved when we’ve released the EP and start working towards the full album. So it made sense to be The Knightleys. There would be many of me, and everyone I worked with was one of us in the identity we were creating too.

I am the only Knightley. But I am also multitudes, and finding the right character voice means permission to bring all of them all to life. 

The Knightleys’ first single will be released in Autumn 2026. Follow here.