I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons)...

Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.

History makes my mouth water – and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.

I am torn between the freedom of this adventure and the benefits of civilization despite its constraints.

When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don’t invite someone into your world very easily.

Cases fired by emotion rather than money were dangerous.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.

Writers need each other.

What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking.

They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?

Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it.

It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.

Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the...

As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues...

He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.

Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.

Sometimes I create a character from a scrap – a mere mention that has been left behind.

Mirabelle sat down, dropping into the cushions like a ball being caught in a large leather glove.

Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind.

Digital distribution has widened the reading world.

She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what...

When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie’s crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.

I think that everyone has something that they will kill for.

Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric.

I’ve always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached.

The law don’t like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures.

Women the world over suffer restrictions.

Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country – a very different world – and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it...

I found out pretty quickly that there is a lot of money to be made if you can become the kind of woman who doesn’t look like the kind of woman she is.

I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it’s no surprise that I ended up writing for a living.

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

If you tempted a poor man with a fortune, who could blame the fellow for taking what he could?

I wondered if that was what I was doing myself – caring so much about something that was so long gone that I was only propping it up.

The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured – we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

Escapers were the cream of the crop.

Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone...

An important part of deciding where we want to go, as a society and culture, is knowing where we have come from, and indeed, how far we have come.

When you want something badly enough it’s amazing what you’ll ignore.

On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they’d liked what I’d written and by the by, more about them than I’d ever...

In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I’ve discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of...

Archive material is a fabulous starting point – individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.

I’m a library user and I just don’t hoard books. To me, they’re for sharing.

Readership is highly dependent upon format and distribution as much as it is on content.

His heart is pounding and when he kisses her it is as if the whole of Riyadh disappears – the wide sky, the hard surface of the roof, the date palms and the water wells.

I decided to coin the term ‘cosy crime noir’ for Brighton Belle. That is ‘cosy crime’ for today’s sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.

In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.

There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers – as many different responses as there are readers.