Although my writing crosses different media, fact and fiction, there are some underlying themes which link them all.

First, I'm fascinated by families. Perhaps this is because
my father was a genealogist (Anthony Wagner KCVO - he was Garter King of Arms, head of an institution called the College of Arms during the 60s and 70s; one of the men
in tights and tabards at the Queen's Coronation and
Winston Churchill's funeral and designer of many coats
of arms during that period) so there's little I don't know
about my own heritage.

 

And my mother, Dame Gillian Wagner, comes at families
from a sociological point of view: She was Chairman of
Barnardos for many years, and then of the Thomas
Coram Foundation, has served on many other voluntary organisations and headed a government enquiry into Residential Care. She has also written meticulously researched biographies of Dr Barnardo and Thomas Coram as well as a book about the centuries of British children adopted out overseas, Children of the Empire
and The Chocolate Conscience about the Quaker chocolate families of Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree.

 

In my own family, my husband is adopted, as is his sister; I have two adopted cousins and we have two daughters who we adopted from Russia. We have almost no information about my husband's or daughters' biological backgrounds.

I’m also continually intrigued by the nature of relationships – between partners, parents and children, friends and rivals, neighbours and colleagues. My work with parents, children and in work-life balance has allowed me to explore the reality of such relationships and process them fictionally in Blood and Water and Kindred Spirits. Working in the media has opened up other aspects; certainly the experience of The Lovers Guide has found its way into the fiction of Mr Mikey’s Ladies! (For more on the writing of Mr Mikey’s Ladies click here).

Although I have only written television and not stage scripts, I love theatre and drama. I studied it at university, where I also acted; then spent ten years as a performing arts reviewer and journalist. Theatre has a way of invading my novels, with As You Like It in Blood and Water;  the production of Hamlet takes an even larger role in Kindred Spirits; and Mr Mikey’s Ladies is almost a musical masquerading as a novel – at least in Mr Mikey’s head.

Finally, places and their history are starting points for all my fiction writing. Each of the novels is set in a house and environment that I’ve inhabited myself. Blood and Water was started when I lived in London’s Crystal Palace area; in Kindred Spirits Mo and her family move from there to South Norfolk, as I did with my family, and once again she delves into the history of the area; and for Mr Mikey’s Ladies I returned to, Australia – specifically Sydney’s Balmain area – where I lived in my twenties.