Joanna Trollope, 58, is the best-selling author of The Choir, The Rector's Wife, Other's People Children - which were all made into successful television series - A Spanish Lover, and latest novel girl from the south.  She was born in her grandfather's rectory in the Cotswolds in December 1943.  She is the eldest of three siblings, the mother of two daughters, stepmother of two stepsons and now a grandmother.  She was state educated in Surrey, then won a "tiny, tiny" scholarship to Oxford and went on to be first a civil servant, then a teacher, before succumbing to full time writing about twenty years ago.  She has been married twice and now lives alone - except for a Labrador the size of a sofa - partly in London and partly in the Cotswolds.  She lists her recreations in Who's Who as "reading, conversation and very long baths".  

Favourite books: Middlemarch by George Eliot; The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay; Period Piece by Gwen Raverat; Shakespeare