My interest in writing began as a child, but The End of Magic is my first published novel. I studied English as an undergraduate, and loved the poetry of Keats and Coleridge, but as a postgraduate I got side-tracked into the political writing of the Romantic period and did my doctorate on the journalism of William Cobbett, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1995. I became a University lecturer on graduation, and continued my work on Cobbett with a six volume edition of his writing, as well as various other essays, reviews and bibliographical entries on the prose of the period. But so much time reading Cobbett's descriptions of the good life had its effect. In 2001 I gave up academia, moved to Cornwall in 2004, and since then my family has scratched a living brewing beer (my husband), and making pots (me).We have geese, chickens and pigs, as well as two sons, a dog, two cats, and various fish.The End of Magic took its inspiration from our family love-affair with the Cornish landscape, and with the superb fantasy fiction I have read with my children over the last decade. I am currently working on my next novel.