1–What is the title of your latest release? THE WINTER GARDEN 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? A woman looking for a fresh start is haunted by the parallel life of a Tudor woman with secrets to reveal. 3–How did you decide to write about the Gunpowder Plot? As a historian, I’m always drawn to the women from the footnotes of the historical record. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is such a male-dominated story on the surface. All the conspirators were men, and you seldom hear about the women whose lives were also affected by it. I wanted to find out about them and write about the turbulent Tudor years preceding the plot from their point of view. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? I’d be very happy to hang out with both my contemporary and my historical protagonist. Lucy, the present-day heroine, is trying to recover from a serious illness and build a new life. She’s a musician and I’d love to chat to her about everything from Mozart to history to the importance of family ties. Anne Catesby, my historical heroine, is someone with whom I identified closely when I was writing…

Many of us are familiar with the story of Lady Diana Spencer, the beautiful daughter of an Earl who married a prince at the age of nineteen only for the marriage to founder and end in a well-publicised divorce. What is less known is that Diana Spencer was not the first aristocrat of that name and that an ancestor of hers, Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, had a life that has some uncanny echoes of her own. It was this earlier Diana Spencer who was the inspiration for the central character of my latest book, The Woman in the Lake. She was born in 1735, the daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough.  At the age of 23 she married Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. They had two sons. Friends and family were taken aback by the match as Fred was a known to be an extravagant womaniser with a bad reputation – not for nothing was his nickname at Eton “Bully.” After the marriage he maintained exactly the same lifestyle that he had had before, keeping a string of mistresses, drinking heavily and spending even more extravagantly. There were rumours that he was…