Ninety-seven is my lucky number..

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 ar….

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

Her imperturbable self-confidence (Duchesse de Maine) caused Madame de Stael to write that the Duchesse believed in herself the same way she believed….

My mother, who was quite sharp when I was young, became utterly mild..

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

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing..

Mary Queen of Scots was my first love, and that is always something special..

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

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere..

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 O….

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

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful ….

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….

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

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

I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't..

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the p….

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

As the Dauphine stepped out of her carriage on to the ceremonial carpet that had been laid down, it was the Duc de Choiseul who was given the privile….

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema..