● Like many novelists, I always dreamed of being an author. At the age of four, I sat at a typewriter and imagined I was creating brilliant prose. In fact I only managed to jam the keys.

● I was raised in Alexandria, my mother’s home town. Everyone spoke at least three languages, often within the same sentence. My Middle Eastern roots inspired my third novel The Girls from Alexandria.

● At Cambridge University, I studied medicine and my fellow students. My writing career developed alongside NHS clinical practice and I became known as a medical journalist, contributing to titles as varied as The Lancet and The Sun.  I wrote as The Sun Doctor for over 20 years. And if you search dentists' waiting rooms, you may still find tattered copies of Punch magazine with my articles.

● I love writing fiction. All my novels feature multicultural characters with dilemmas related to love, loss, honesty, and the meaning of home. There’s often a medical strand too. I believe in writing what I know.

● It began with a string of popular non-fiction books. Many are on child health, parenting, or twins, so they’re a fusion of personal experience and my professional expertise. I’ve regularly appeared on TV and radio, talking about topical health issues.

● What else?

In 2014, I was elected President of the Guild of Health Writers.

I’m proud to be a Fellow of my alma mater Newnham College, Cambridge.

Two of my medical textbooks were co-authored with colleagues from Imperial College Medical School, London, where I taught for many years. One of the titles received a BMA award. I received a personal award in 2022 for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching.

In September 2022, I delivered the prestigious Olsen Lecture Has Covid Fractured the Way We Live? (Spoiler: yes, it has).

My three sons are all adults. I live with my husband in Hampstead and Cambridge.