- I studied Medicine at university but didn't finish, largely due to squeamishness. (Yes, I know, I should probably have thought of that beforehand.) I had to man up to research nursing during the Crimean War for my new novel No Place for a Lady. Some of the techniques the Victorians used in battlefield hospitals sound positively medieval.
- At the age of seven, I won a year's supply of chocolate in a Cadbury's essay writing competition. It may be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
- At the age of eight I used to write a magazine with quizzes, stories, pictures and jokes in it, which I distributed to the neighbours. Unfortunately no one thought they were worth keeping, not even my own mother, so no copies survive.
- One of my hobbies is matchmaking, at which I have mixed success. A marriage has resulted from my meddling, but in another case someone who shall remain nameless ended up taking out an injunction against a guy she met at my 30th birthday party…
- Another hobby is throwing parties. I like to arrange parties for friends' birthdays, a girls' cocktail party at Christmas, and launch parties for all my books, of course. I try to make each party a little different, with unusual décor or canapés, or perhaps some kind of floor show.
- I swim every day, all year round, in an outdoor pond in North London where the water temperature rises to 26°C in August and dips to 0°C in January. I get a brilliant endorphin rush from the cold that leaves me with a grin on my face - although my partner thinks it's simply relief that I'm still alive.
- Time for a boast: my ten-year-old niece is representing Britain at the World Skipping Championships in Paris this July. She is phenomenal and already has sackfuls of medals. Go Flo!
- I write a non-fiction series of love stories from different eras: one book is about the poor folk who booked their honeymoon on the Titanic, and others cover couples who met during the First or Second World Wars. I've encountered some fascinating people while researching them.
- In my novels I interweave real historical characters with imagined ones and set myself strict rules, in particular that the real characters' stories must follow historical fact. So I couldn't allow Florence Nightingale to have a love affair with a Russian general, for example - much as she might have enjoyed it.
- It takes me over a year to write each novel because of all the research I need to do before I even type the first line, so the next one won't be out till summer 2016. It's not that I'm lazy - honest!
Gill Paul's most recent historical novel No Place for a Lady is set during the Crimean War and concerns two sisters, one a nurse and the other a lady who has followed her officer husband to the front line. Previous novels include Women and Children First, set on the Titanic, and The Affair, set in Rome during the making of Cleopatra, when Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love.
No Place for a Lady