about the author

I have spent all my life with books: reading them, studying them (when I was at University), translating them (when I lived in Africa), teaching them (when I was a French teacher) and working with them (when I was a school librarian).

One day - about ten years ago - I thought: I'd like to write them.

So I did!

My first books were for younger children. In Drake's Drummer Boy (1998), Will sails around the world with Sir Francis Drake; in Sam Stars at Shakespeare's Globe (2006), Sam works with William Shakespeare.

As you can see already, I like the sixteenth century. And the more I learn about it, the more it fascinates me. Young people then were not very different from today, as you will read in Raven Queen, which I have written for older readers.

I do all kinds of writing: stories for young people learning English as a foreign language; re-telling the classics for young children in a series called Fast Track Classics: (if you have to read Oliver Twist quickly and you've left it too late, try my version - only forty-eight pages. Your teacher will never know!).

What is a typical writing day? About three hours writing with pen and paper, early in the morning, and usually in coffee shops. Then I use my computer to write and re-write - and to do my research.

I am married with two grown-up children, and enjoy going to the cinema and the theatre or anywhere where I can watch other people.