Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.

It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.

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

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

I believe the era of the militant lady is back.

I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.