Diane Setterfield

Diane Setterfield was born in Reading and grew up in Theale (both in Berkshire, in the South of England), she attended Theale Green School, and then Bristol University where she studied French Literature. She has taught in various universities in England and France, where she lived for several years.

The Thirteenth Tale is her first novel; her previous publications have been academic works about 19th and 20th century French literature, in particular the works of André Gide (a French writer, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947). She is 42, married to Peter Whittall, an accountant, and lives in Harrogate, North Yorkshire (the North of England) with their four cats where, until recently, she ran her own business teaching French to people planning to move to France.

She left academia in the late '90s, she enjoyed teaching but hated university politics and after five years was still working to pay off the loan she had taken out to fund her PhD. "I gave up my job to write before I knew what I wanted to write about," she says. "It might seem bold or brave, but really it comes down to how much you want to do something. If you want to do something so badly, then you have to take a bold decision."