Kate Forsyth

And that's what I search for when I'm building character.

The single thing that makes them...

come to life that animates them in my own imagination.

Once I rooted her in Brittany, once I gave her this heritage of this ancient mythology then the whole story just came to life for me.

Well, my own personal fascination with the period began when I was 14 years old and I picked up a book called The Scarlet Pimpernel off my grandmother's bookshelf.

I absolutely loved it and for a little while I read my way through the entire oeuvre of Scarlet Pimpernel books.

Then my mother thought that since I was so fascinated by the French Revolution that I really should read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which I absolutely loved as well and is still my favourite Dickens novel.

I went on from there.

I read everything I could find that was set during the French Revolution.

I had a whole summer of living here in Sydney in a blazing hot summer, but my spirit was in France.

I read a biography of Marie Antoinette.

I read non-fiction books.

I read all my way around the subject and I always knew I wanted to set a book there.

So that is how it began for me.

Were there fictional gardens?

The Secret Garden, one of my favourite books when I was a child and one that I have re-read many, many times.

I actually read it aloud to my children when they were young.

I've always longed for a secret garden of my own.

Remind us who wrote The Secret Garden.

Francis Hodgson Burnett.