Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

The moment that changed me for ever was when I had my first seminar with my history professor at the University of Sussex. I realised that history would answer all the questions I had spent my life asking. It was an extraordinary moment.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

I like writing historical fiction.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.