I began writing books about lesbians in the 1980s. I have twice won the US Lambda Literary Award for best gay writing. In 2014 in the UK I was named a Rainbow List National Treasure in the Lifetime Achievement category… Two of my books, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall and Coconut Chaos, have been broadcast as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’. The Radclyffe Hall book was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter was a New York Times ‘Notable Book of the Year’ and featured on BBC 4’s ‘A Good Read’. My first book Gluck: Her Biography was recently the basis for a BBC documentary and an exhibition at the Brighton Art Gallery. Among other titles Selkirk’s Island won the Whitbread biography award, Edith Cavell won East Anglia Book of the Year and Murder at Wrotham Hill was shortlisted for a Crime Writers Golden Dagger Award.

I have also written plays for radio and stage. Strip Show, a series of monologues by women, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival and at the King’s Head in Islington. Among my radio plays Prunella Scales starred in What a Saga and Patricia Routledge in A Horse Called Gertrude Stein.