Philippa Gregory

My stepmother appeared when I was about 9. My brother was sent off to an institute in Scotland & my sister & I were sent to school. As my stepmother's ideas were then wholly Quaker, mixed with a naive & charming innocence & a little snobbery, it was one dotty epoch on top of another. I always remained terrified of my father.

We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.