If you are reading this then the chances are you are a keen reader. What starts us off on the path to bookworm status? For me it was all the stories Dad made up for us at bedtime. Mum followed this up by taking us to the library regularly as soon as we were old enough to be allowed a library card. Believe it or not that was the age of five in those days. I still remember the excitement of that first visit. What a summer. I spent most of it reading, sitting on our garden swing. I started with all the Thomas The Tank Engine Books. I loved Thomas but wasn’t keen on Gordon who seemed quite nasty to poor Thomas.
I proved to be a fast reader and by the age of nine Mum let me read her books when I’d finished my own. Jean Plaidy was a favourite of hers. We must have had an interesting conversation after I read the one Jean Plaidy wrote about Lucretia Borgia. Another favourite of Mum’s was Georgette Heyer. Reading my way through Heyer’s books started me off on my love affair with the Regency period. I read pretty much all the children’s classics in amongst Mum’s books. Other authors of adult fiction caught my attention later, notably crime writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Wilkie Collins and of course Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet I always found time to read as many historical romances, especially those set in the Regency period, as I could. I hope my love of that elegant era comes over in my books.
