My first two novels were both historical. A Crown of Roses is the story of Sovra, daughter of exiled Jacobite parents, who is found in a Spanish convent by the son of one of her father’s friends and brought first to his parents’ country house and then to fashionable London in 1770. It’s probably kindest described as a meditation on how the ‘good old days’ weren’t as much fun as all that. Upon Liberty is set at the start of the American War of Independence. It opens with our heroine, Roxana, escaping an abusive marriage and brings her to Edinburgh, where she becomes an actress – I had a lot of fun researching the customs of eighteenth-century theatre.

My unpublished crime novels are a series of three, The Regatta Murders, The Up Helly A Murders and The Galleon Murders. They’re set in the imaginary westside village of Grunavoe, and are narrated alternately by Verity, a student, and her great-aunt Tess, who lives in Grunavoe with several cats and ponies, and commutes to the village shop by boat. Tess knows her village and the people in it; she does the thinking, and Verity, who’s a younger, more sociable Cass, does the leg-work and, of course, the sailing. I think they’re great fun, but at the time they were written, ‘cosy’ was unfashionable. Ah, well, maybe the world’s not yet ready for a no-holds barred insider view of a country Up Helly A!