Ann Widdecombe is best known as a Member of Parliament and for her broadcasting and journalism, but long had ambitions to write novels. She was born in 1947 and grew up moving around the country and abroad with her parents, as her father served in the Admiralty. She was educated at the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford. She now lives in London and in the picturesque village of Sutton Valence, Kent. She is the author of two previous novels, The Clematis Tree and An Act of Treachery. She writes her novels on long train journeys and in Singapore when she visits her Chinese nanny.