I was born in London and spent several years of my childhood and teens in countries where my foreign correspondent father was based.  It was a time of contrasts, from living in South Africa during the apartheid years, to the Lebanon before the “troubles”.   I spent a year in Beirut where I studied English Literature and Drama at the American University and raced as an amateur jockey.  Sunnie Mann, whose husband Jackie Mann, was later taken hostage by terrorists, lent me one of the magnificent Arab stallions from her riding school.   Beirut at that time was a heady mix of spies, eccentric orientalists and rich socialites, living in a parallel world to the Palestinian refugee camps outside the city that became a breeding ground for terrorism. 

  After a year of working for the publisher Andre Deutsch in London, I took off to India, on the hippie trail.  I’ve returned to India regularly since, travelling from the Himalayas to Kerala, writing travel articles.  I also worked with the original “Shakespeare Wallah” Geoffrey Kendal (father of Felicity Kendal) on his autobiography. 

I came to writing fiction after having worked in various journalistic fields, from political and diplomatic reporting to travel writing, theatre and book reviewing.   I edited an arts diary on the Observer, worked as a theatre critic for the Evening News and The Times, and was literary editor for the Sunday Express.   I returned to the Sunday Express more recently as their opera critic.

I began writing fiction with short stories, which were published in anthologies and magazines. I moved on to a novel, A Fatal Season, set in contemporary theatre, which drew on my experience as a theatre critic.   Masque of the Gonzagas followed three years later in 1999, inspired by Monteverdi and Italy.   The Mirror Makers centres on my fascination with France, where I spent some time in Paris and Versailles in search of the past, and of Louis XIV.   I am at present completing my fourth novel.