Margaret Barker pursued a variety of interesting careers before she became a full-time author Besides holding a B A. degree in French and linguistics, she is a licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music, a State Registered Nurse and a qualified teacher. Happily married, she has two sons, a daughter and an increasing number of grandchildren. She lives with her husband in a sixteenth-century thatched house near the East Anglian coast of England.