About
I grew up in West London, in an area of mock Tudor houses and tree-lined streets, but I'd always loved the countryside we visited on Sunday afternoon trips. And that's where I live now, in a small village in a rural county of hills and vales and rolling farmland. It was only a few years ago that I learned that where I now live is also where generations of my family came from — a curious kind of full circle.
Home is a hilltop village in the Vale of Aylesbury, and it’s this area that inspired The Colour of Secrets. My debut novel was born out of my earliest memories of this area, during the 1950s and 60s; a nostalgic and bittersweet recollection of a world that’s now disappeared. None of the characters or situations are real, though the spark began as a short writing exercise based on my father's stories of being sent from urban London to stay in the country during summer holidays. He never knew why, though fortunately, he lived long enough for me to discover our family link and tell him.
My latest novel, Captured in Art, steps even further back in time — a project that came about quite by accident! Following a chance discovery of the Victorian Aesthetic Era, a casual liking for nineteenth-century art quickly spiralled into a five-year obsession. I became a fully paid-up enthusiast, hunting down hidden histories across countless galleries, exhibitions, and grand historic houses.
When I'm not lost in late-Victorian research, exploring the astonishing turquoise tiles of an Aesthetic studio-house, or tending to my country garden, the research for my next book has already begun. I'm excited to dive into writing it! Onto the next story...
Wonderfully written, I felt that I knew the characters personally.
A charming novel, showing the other side of what we sometimes consider to have been 'a gentler time'. Very fluent descriptive passages give the reader a perfect sense of the time and place, and where the characters are set. Do read it!
Gather round, people
A well written novel with delightful story that flows deceptively between the characters and places they inhabit. The author summed it up - "when they were gone, the room was at a loss." Lovely.
An enchanting book. Takes older readers back to an apparently gentler age, where it was always summer. The story progresses over time, revealing a little more of the secrets lurking in the background. A true coming-of-age story, I was very sorry to finish this book; felt as if I knew the main character well.