A Proper Family Christmas

Jane Gordon-Cumming spent the first three years of her life on a Thames barge in a creek in Kent. She was an early reader, and when they moved to a 'real' house, used to make up stories to entertain her sister (now herself a best-selling author) based loosely on the teachers at their South Kensington school. They eventually settled in Wimbledon, in a house with a turret overlooking the All England Club, and Jane attended the High School, envying her sister's more exciting, if less academic, performing arts school. She read Classics at Bedford College, London, but was always more interested in writing and performing satirical sketches and songs. It was after moving to Oxfordshire that Jane began to publish short stories, and in 1982 she and her mother became founder members of the still flourishing Oxford Writers Group. She began a DPhil on landscape history, but discovered she'd rather save her creative energy for fiction. She and her husband were already both 40 when they met, and they ran Easter revision courses together for thirteen years, before deciding it would be less stressful to renovate houses. They work as volunteers with Oxford Archaeology, organise local community activities, and Jane sings in two choirs, leaving little time for their canal boat. Jane's main influences are Wodehouse, Saki, Richmal Crompton, Arthur Ransome and Georgette Heyer, as reflected in this, her first published novel.