I was born in 1956 in Washington DC, second daughter of an English mother and an American father.  I grew up in Washington, Chile, and Michigan.  At the University of Michigan I did joint honors in English and Classics, and won the Hopwood Award for Fiction, the Bain-Swigett Prize for poetry in traditional form, and the Phillips Prize for Classical Greek.  From U of M I went to Newnham College, Cambridge, in the UK, to read Classics.  I sold my first novel while I was supposed to be revising for my final exams; revision suffered, but I still managed a 2-1.  I liked Cambridge very much, so decided to stay on for another year while working on another novel.   Then, like many another woman, I Met a Man.  He was working on his PhD in Physics.  The following year he had a position as a post-doc in Paris, and I discovered a pressing need to learn French.  We've been married 30 years now, quite blissfully.  We went from Paris to California, then back to Cambridge for a long time.  We are currently based in Coventry and the University of Warwick.  We have four children and one grandson (exceptional for beauty and intelligence, of course! Am I a doting granny?  You better believe it!)  We live in Coventry, have a garden and a dog, and go walking in the country a lot.