I always wanted to be a traveller. A railway line ran past the garden of my childhood home, and I used to lie awake listening to the trains chug by, wishing I was on one of them.
I was born in New Zealand in 1943. My father was a ship's surgeon from Scotland, and my mother's forbears were all Scots too. They met after a great earthquake in 1933. I was the fourth of their five children. We all returned to live in Britain in 1945, and I grew up in South London.
My first big adventure was teaching in a school in Malaysia when I was eighteen. I went trekking in the jungle, and decided that an adventurous life was for me, even though I went down with typhoid and was bitten by a sea snake.
After I'd been to University (in Bristol) I got a job in Ethiopia, teaching English in Addis Ababa, the capital. A friend and I would go off into the remote areas, hiring mules when there were no roads to travel on. I loved Ethiopia, its beautiful countryside and brave, stoical people.
Later, I worked for a summer in India. I had to travel by air from Mumbhai to Bhopal, and was horribly airsick. The man in the next seat was extremely kind to me. His name was David McDowall. I liked him at once, and we got married soon after. It was the best thing I ever did in my life.
David and I began our married life in Iraq. We visited the Marshes in the south and the Kurdish region in the north. After our first son, Angus, was born, we moved to Beirut, in Lebanon. A civil war was raging at the time. The fighting became so bad that eventually we were evacuated to Vienna, where William, our second son, was born.
We finally decided to take a great risk and see if we could earn our living as writers. We had luckily bought a house in London while we had been working abroad. We came home, settled down, and wrote. Being rather hard up, we took in bed and breakfast, but our books began to sell well, and we have never looked back.
I went back to Ethiopia thirty years after I'd left, in 1996, and fell under that lovely country's spell again. I set up a project with the British Council collecting folk stories from traditional story tellers, and made many journeys to the farthest corners of Ethiopia. I travelled extensively in Kenya too, in order to write the Wild Things series. Other projects have taken me to Palestine, Khazakhstan, Iran and Russia. These days, I tell myself that I'm too old for big adventures. I should spend my time sitting in my London study, snoozing by the fire, or pottering around in Edinburgh, where we spend part of our time. But if an invitation should flutter through the door, or an idea, or a mad, mad inspiration, I know I'll be off again, just as soon as I've packed my bag.
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Where do you get your ideas from? Can you tell me where your dreams come from? My ideas come from the same place.
Out of all the books you’ve written, which one is your favourite? If you’ve got brothers or sisters, try asking your mother which is her favourite child. She’ll tell you that she loves you all as much as each other. That’s how I feel about my books.
How long does it take to write a book? Every book is different. My Enemy My Friend took me a year to write, because I had to do so much research. Red Sky in the Morning took six weeks. I was inspired from start to finish, and couldn't stop writing. Most novels take between three and six months these days
Did you want to be a writer when you were a child? No. I wanted to learn lots of foreign languages and be an interpreter at international conferences. I saw myself whispering translations in the ears of world leaders, with the fate of the planet in my hands. Fat chance.
Do you design your own covers? No. Many different talented artists and designers work on the covers. It's a very specialist job!
How do you choose the titles of your books? This is the hardest part. Sometimes it takes me weeks to think of a good title.
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The worst things that ever happened to me were being bitten by a poisonous snake in the South China Sea (I nearly died), waiting for the fire brigade to arrive when our house went on fire, and being chased by a rhino in Kenya
The best things that ever happened to me were marrying my husband, David McDowall, my two sons, Angus and William, and going to Malaysia, Ethiopia, India, France, Norway, Palestine, Iran, Kenya, Pakistan, China, Russia…
The nastiest job I ever had: washing the dirtiest linen in a hospital laundry
The nicest job I ever had: playing the violin in the Iraq symphony orchestra
The things I hate most: snakes, being cold, forgetting things all the time
The things I like most: very black chocolate, Mozart, reading, getting up late
My favourite book: There's a new one every week