Ann Swinfen was born in Akron, Ohio, on 5th October 1937, and died on 4th August 2018, in Broughty Ferry, Scotland. Educated in America and England, she was awarded degrees from Oxford, London and Dundee universities. Married to a fellow student in 1960, she brought up five children, while working variously as a computer journalist, a part-time lecturer in English, and a member of the Council of the Open University. Altogether she published one non-fiction book, In Defence of Fantasy, and twenty-three hugely successful, and mostly historical, novels, set in the 14th, 16th and 17th centuries.