The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!
I think mine is the fullest and most plausible account of what went on in Marie Antoinette's life.
I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.
Of course there's no such thing as a totally objective person except Almighty God if she exists.
Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich privileged woman in the 18th century but no fun at all to be her maid.
It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant painful book.
I love hearing details of writers' craft as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.
My mother was a politician in my formative years.
I hate the only one of my book jackets when I was made up professionally my hair made into a smooth bell.
I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.
My mother who was quite sharp when I was young became utterly mild.
If I write that it was a cold day you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.
My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford and her own mother was a doctor.
King Charles II liked women's company and well as making love to them.
Normally I make myself swim do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.
The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable but not too glamorous.
That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.
Her imperturbable self-confidence (Duchesse de Maine) caused Madame de Stael to write that the Duchesse believed in herself the same way she believed in God without explanation or discussion.
I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.
After Mary Queen of Scots I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.
Darnley who like Banquo's ghost seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive.
People in my books tend to get their just deserts even if not at the hands of the police.
I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.
I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.
I have seen all I have heard all I have forgotten all. marie antoinette
I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.
Mary Queen of Scots was my first love and that is always something special.
I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.
I'm glad I was never an heiress.
Ninety-seven is my lucky number.
As long as you persecute people you will actually throw up terrorism.
I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't.