Dr Catherine Gavin is one of our most distinguished (and successful) novelists. Born in Aberdeen (and with a First from the University there), she went on into academic life, politics and journalism. In 1944, after the Liberation of Paris, she was sent with eight other women journalists to be tested as war correspondents. Dr Gavin was the only one chosen to be accredited to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, and for the next nine months alternated between combat reporting and covering the complex political situation in Paris. She was present at the German surrender at Rheims in May 1945, and was later decorated with the 1939-45 Star and the France and Germany Star. Her experiences at the front intensified her knowledge of war, so convincingly displayed in A Light Woman. Dr Gavin joined the foreign staff of the Daily Express after the war, reporting from the Middle East and Paris, where she was married to John Ashcraft in 1948. She also spent two years on Time magazine and lectured extensively in America on European politics. Her full-time writing career began in 1955 with an analysis of postwar French politics, Liberated France, which was followed by her first historical novel, Madeleine, in 1957. She now lives with her husband in California