“While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.”

“Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.”

“I'm not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now - have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?”

“I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these...”

“In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we're supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parent...”

“Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.”

“Our archives are treasure troves - a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive.”

“Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.”

“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them b...”

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

“You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right -- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws ...”

“The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.”

“True vice, my lady, would frighten us all, if it did not wear the mask of virtue. (p.56)”

“I believe yours is the only wisdom, Demelza.”