I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all. marie antoinette.

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

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.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

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.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.

Looking without passion is always a good plan where history is concerned. But is it really possible with regard to the career and character of Marie Antoinette?

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery, but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.

I hate the only one of my book jackets when I was made up professionally, my hair made into a smooth bell.

If I write that it was a cold day, you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

I'm glad I was never an heiress.