Miss Jesmond's Heir

Paula Marshall was born in Leicester and grew up in Nottingham. Her father, a mathematician who as a result of being gassed in the first World War never really recovered his health, introduced her to a great many things. He taught her chess, cards, painting, and had her reading Dickens and Thackeray by the age of ten! Her great loves at school were History, English and Art; she found it difficult to decide whether she wanted to become the world’s greatest novelist or the world’s greatest painter! After school she started work as a research librarian, working for her Library Examinations after work. She spent many happy days among old works and papers and remembers with affection working with the Byron collection at Newstead Abbey. This reading stood her in good stead when she began writing Regency romances – she had actually handled Byron’s letters and possessions. While working in the reference library Paula met her future husband. Also a librarian, he returned to complete his fellowship after he was demobbed from the RAF. They were studying the same texts and decided to work together. The result was that he got his fellowship – while she got him! Paula began a secondary career writing and lecturing on local history. Amongst other things she lectured on Robin Hood and wrote a paper wherein she identified the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. Paula has three children and when the third started school she returned to work, beginning a new career as a part-time lecturer in English and General Studies. After four years of teaching it became necessary for her to gain a degree and Paula did just that. She enrolled in the Open University and spent the next four years earning a First Class Honours BA in History. On retirement Paula took up painting again and even managed to sell a portrait of the footballer Stuart Pearce to Nottingham Forest Football Club. While on holiday in Arizona Paula was finally urged to write the book she had been threatening to write since she was a child. Paula gets great pleasure from writing Mills & Boon Historical Romances where she can use her wide historical knowledge. She has lectured on everything in English history from the Civil War onwards, as well as US and Russian history, 1760-1980, and the psychology of war and revolution. Paula and her husband have spent their holidays travelling the world from the Arctic Circle, Scandinavia and Russia, around Europe to the USA and New Zealand. She finds that nearly everything she writes for Mills & Boon draws on this wealth of knowledge.