10 things to know about Kate Mosse

1 Swimming helps her silence the busyness of her brain: ‘It’s so utterly boring it puts me into a fugue state.’ 2 She writes on a laptop with no internet connection. ‘My desk is where imagination happens.’ 3 Kate started out as a book editor. ‘I was expecting my second child and had just been offered a big job in publishing, but I knew I didn’t want it. Over lunch with a literary agent friend I said that the book I really wanted to read about motherhood didn’t exist. And he said, “Then write it.” He negotiated a publishing contract for me the next day.’ (Becoming a Mother, Kate’s first book, was first published in 1993 and is in its seventh edition). 4 Her favourite book is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: ‘It’s about landscape, race, women’s place in the world and the amorality of nature, but most of all it’s about place: the moors and Wuthering Heights are the lead characters. It changed what was possible for women to write.’ 5 The first novel in her Languedoc series, Labyrinth – a Grail adventure story about two women separated by 800 years – has been translated into more than 37 languages, was the bestselling title in the UK in 2006, has won various prestigious awards and has now sold more than 8 million copies worldwide. 6 Her husband, Greg, took her surname. The couple has two grown-up children, Felix and Martha. ‘I’m insanely proud of them! I’ve learnt a lot from them: they’re both brilliant at friendship, are loyal and supportive, passionate about their careers and work hard.’ 7

She’s annoyingly accomplished. Aside from her bestselling fiction, Kate also writes non-fiction, plays and short stories, and hosts TV and radio shows. She’s also deputy chair of the Royal National Theatre and the founder director of The Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange, then the Baileys Prize for Fiction). In 2013 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature. 8 She loves crime fiction and literary fiction, but says she can’t write either: ‘The sort of writer you are is not the sort of reader you are. I’m a storyteller. Historical fiction is where my heart is.’ 9 When writing a novel, as opposed to researching or planning, she gets up at about 4am seven days a week and works on her first draft for six or seven hours straight. ‘Getting four or five hours under your belt before anyone else is around is ideal.’ 10 She believes strongly in book awards for female writers: ‘Women’s voices and rights are actively being rolled back. To see them honoured is very important, as is celebrating a diverse range of voices in terms of class, ethnicity, age and gender. The Women’s Prize contributes to the positive amplification of brilliant women’s voices.’