Hello, and welcome to my website - thanks for dropping by. Just a little about me: I write historical fiction, sometimes with a present-day timeline and sometimes entirely set in the past. I like this genre partly because I love the process of research (hours in the London Library, kidding myself I'm working) and partly because a few prompts from the past help to get my ideas flowing. 

Sometimes I come across incidents that stop me in my tracks and insist on their place in a story: the round-up of Jews in Paris, 1942, for example, when parents were prepared to give their children to strangers in an attempt to save them. Or the moment in a Viennese park when a group of Nazi thugs humiliated elderly Jews by making them climb trees and pretend to be birds, or run until they collapsed with exhaustion.

The dangers and pressures we face today may be different but the same questions remain. How far would we go to protect those we love? Do we dare speak out against hatred and prejudice, no matter how high the cost? Is a life without freedom worth living?

When not pondering such weighty matters, I'm mostly walking my dogs, baking (sourdough and Dorset apple cake my specialities) and reading. Favourite authors include Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout, Anne Patchett and Kate Atkinson.    

photo credit: byBallard