My first attempt at writing was at the age of 11, when I was inspired by the 1981 TV adaptation of 'Brideshead Revisited'. My effort was also about upper-class toffs romping around a stately home but not, unsurprisingly, up to Evelyn Waugh's standards. I remember falling madly in love with Anthony Andrews, and ironically, I worked in his house in Belgravia 20-years later, installing a phone line. Sadly, he wasn't there at the time.

I'm a born and bred Londoner and have lived and worked in my beloved home city all my life. My education was woeful, typical of most working-class kids of the '70's, and I could barely read when I left secondary school. I managed to drag myself through the sixth form and two years at Brixton College, before working for BT as an engineer where I was the only woman working with two hundred blokes!

I am now divorced with two beautiful sons, and after the birth of my youngest son in 2009, I took a slightly more sedate role within BT, when I managed to convince myself to start writing down some of the ideas for novels that I've had clanging around in my brain for the past 40-odd years. I thought it was better to drag them out before the menopause and then dementia kick in. Update: Menopause has now kicked in, so I'm now operating in the small window left before I start putting my phone in the fridge and the milk in my handbag. 

I am a complete history nut, and I take my inspiration from reading about real people and events in history, add some fictional characters, throw in some of my life experiences and that's basically the end result. They primarily take place in London and are all seen from a working-class women's point of view. Servants and prostitutes, or victims of cruelty or abuse, while accurately portraying people's lives at the same time.

I’ve used some of the people and bizarre, funny, weird situations I have encountered over the years to give a sense of the human condition and that we come in all shapes, sizes and differences. All my main characters are women and reflect their real-lives and experiences, so I hope to give these, so far voiceless under-class a real voice in a meticulously researched, authentic, and un-sanitised depiction of history.

I hope you enjoy some of the yarns that I have devised, for they are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, very adult, and above all entertaining.