Your hands-down favourite writer?This one is so hard! May I cheat and name five? I love books by Michael Morpurgo, Dick King-Smith, Himanjali Sankar, Shruthi Rao and Richa Jha. I'm already almost panicking about all those I haven't named.
A genre you're partial to?Middle grade historical fiction.
A book you outgrew and grew into again?Probably Anne of Green Gables. I loved reading about her, then found her too much of a chatterbox, and then began to love her again.
A classic you'd like to have writtenI'm torn between A Little Princess and Five Children and It.
A character you wish you'd met?Just one? Mary Challoner (Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer).
An author you want to meet on the other side?Daphne du Maurier
Inside jokes or references that found their way into your writing?I keep editing them out! I'm sure I still have references to all kinds of books in my writing, but nothing comes to mind.
Picture books are......delightful. They fill me up and make me want to go back and discover more and more with each reread.
The book(s) you've gifted the mosthOle books. I know they're a series, but I love them and I've gifted them more often than I can count.
Your personal mad tea party guestsOoh! I love the question, but honestly, I'm such an unsocial person that my ideal tea party would be with friends who don't really want to do anything but sit and do their own thing. So my guests would be my sister and my dearest friends.
Ever fallen in love with a character? Whom?Over and over and over, across gender and age. I loved Fatty (Five Find-Outers and Dog), but I probably fell in love with Bets. I also fell in love with Mr Ravenscar (Faro's Daughter) and several of Madeleine Brent's male and female protagonists.
If you were in a murder mystery, your choice of weapon would be?Poison. I like the elegance of it, however frightening that may sound.
A book-based movie you liked better than the book?How to Train Your Dragon -- I think that's also because I watched the movie first.
A female character you think an author did disservice to.Anne Shirley! She was such a firecracker of a character and then, in the later books, she became so... domestic!
A woman or girl in history you wish had got a different endingPocahontas comes to mind at the moment, but honestly every woman who had no control over her body, her life and her money.
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