Mary's letters to her family and friends in England were purchased by the British Library in 2010, as they represent a unique commentary on South American society and politics following Colombia's independence in the early part of the nineteenth century, as well as describing Mary's experiences in South America as an adventurer and businesswoman.

I was looking for a third idea to complete my Kent historical fiction trilogy, bringing to life little-known stories from the county's colourful past. When I visited Faversham after the launch of Arden, the second book in the trilogy that was set in the town, I came across the intriguing story of Mary English, whose portrait now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Mary was born in Faversham in 1789. She was the daughter of an illiterate dockworker who became a great society beauty of her time, and went to South America to escape a scandal from her past. She ended up running a huge cacao plantation in Colombia, at a time when women were not legally allowed to own businesses there.

I had enjoyed working with historical source material when coming up with my conspiracy theories for Arden, and the idea of extensively using letters actually written by the main character of a novel really appealed to me. All excerpts from the letters in the Mary English archive in the British Library are genuine, and some of Mary's narration of her story in this novel is also based on them. It was almost like we were writing the book together.

Two Different Women. One Shared Destiny

I wanted the book to be more than simply a novelisation of Mary's life, and my research uncovered the story of a second remarkable woman at the centre of nineteenth-century South American history, Manuela Sáenz. Manuela was born in Quito, Ecuador in 1797, she was the long-time lover of Simón Bolívar, the liberator of Colombia from the Spanish, served as a colonel in his army and saved him from being assassinated on at least two occasions. The more I discovered about her, the more astonished I became about the life she had led.

The result is The Other Life of Mary English, a novel about two extraordinary but very different women — strong, independent and unconventional — who together fought oppression, hardship and danger to change the course of South American history.

I hope you enjoy it. If you would like to download a PDF of the chronology of the factual historical events that the story is based on, you can do so here. Download PDF