Judith Cook was originally an investigative journalist. She has written on social issues, including the death of CND campaigner Hilda Murrell, and then biographies of Daphne du Maurier and J.B. Priestley, and studies of Elizabethan theatre, especially the Globe. She writes for theatre (most recently highly successful adaptation of Trollope for Chichester), teaches Elizabethan and Jacobean studies at Exeter University - and writes popular historical fiction.