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.

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.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

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.

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!