There are many ways in which little girls are taught about acceptable female behaviour, much of it being naturally patriarchal, one of which is through the telling of mythologies. When I had read through the family’s books, my French mother casually taught me some basic rules of French grammar and handed me her collection of old French books so I read Colette and Guy de Maupassant alongside Jane Austen, Enid Blyton, and Daphne de Maurier.įrom studying natural history at Cambridge, you moved to writing about history and myth.I wrote my first book, Heroines, in response to the subliminal messages I believed my daughters were receiving, growing up in India. The wonderful owner was sympathetic to my need for books and whenever I was sick, which was predictably often, he would let me ‘borrow’ great stashes of comic books. I also lived across from one of the best family-run bookstores in Delhi - The Bookshop.

There was not a great deal of entertainment available during the endless summer hours in 70s Delhi, and my only sibling was away in boarding school. I grew up with the great gift of boredom, for which books were often the only escape. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation.

This natural history graduate from Cambridge, warns us of the dangers of deleting stories of the Mughal Kings and Queens, as recently happened with certain textbooks. It’s action-packed, yet ruminative on matters like good governance and the kinds of contrary forces that swirl around our world forces that leaders must contend with.įinally, I am thrilled to bring you the incredible Ira Mukhoty, chronicler of kings, queens and princesses, from the Mughals to Rani Laxmibai. There are baddies like the Bear and Baba Yaga. It also moves between centuries - I would expect no less from Orson Scott Card (his Enders Game is one of my favourite sci-fi books of all time) In this one, there’s Ivan, who is propelled from being a professor of Slavic languages to a reluctant king-to-be. The action moves between Kyiv, a forest in the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine and New York. I am listening to Enchantment on audio and find myself walking longer to hear more of this riveting retelling of Sleeping Beauty. My friends and I spent hours cutting magazine pictures, to make our royal scrapbooks, little dreaming of the twists and turns, that were to follow Prince Charles, who will finally be crowned King, a week from now.Īs we run up to the royal coronation, here are five favourite books from around the world, on kings and queens, that offer excitement, intrigue, and the glamour of crowns and gowns. I was eleven years old when Diana married Prince Charles.

The Three Crowns by Jean Plaidy