Anecdotes

Serves on the board of PAL, the Police Athletic League, a charity for underprivileged children.

Member of the Author's Guild of America Council and is on the board of Girls Inc., the nation's leading voice and advocate for girls, whose aim is to inspire young girls to be strong, smart and bold for the 21st Century.

In 1990, the child who disappointed her parents by going to work on a newspaper instead of pursuing a higher education received a Degree of Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa from the Chancellor of Leeds University. She received the award from HRH the Duchess of Kent.

Along with many fiction novels, she has written children's books and 8 books on decorating.

Wrote a syndicated column, Designing Woman, covering interior design and lifestyles, which appeared three times a week in 183 newspapers across America. The column was published for twelve years and garnered several awards.

She says that her journalism background has helped her in writing historical fiction by teaching her to get facts right and to meet deadlines. Journalism also helped to give her psychological insight into a person's thoughts and actions.

She sold her first short story to a children's magazine when she was 10.

When she was a teenager, she got a job in the typing pool at the Yorkshire Evening Post. By the time she was 18, she had worked her way up to women's page editor.

As a child, she loved reading Dickens, Jane Austen, and the Brontes.

She was awarded the O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2007 Queen Elizabeth's Birthday Honors List for her services to literature.

In her novel 'Voice From the Heart' Langley Castle, which features in the story was modeled on Ripley Castle.