I treated myself to a little holiday in the UK to celebrate this exciting event and to meet my publisher and revisit the lovely streets of Oxford where the first and last chapter of the book are set.  My son and I had a fabulous time exploring London too — launching the trip by doing a ‘liquid histories’ walking tour, where we were taken to the most charming, quirky, hidden and unbelievably fabulous little pubs around the City of London and near Blackfriars. We learned about illegal breweries of times past, cock fighting galleries at the tiny establishment still called The Cockpit, and all sorts of sordid and interesting history pertaining to the places and the pints we sampled at each pub, even spending time in a Dominican friary from the thirteenth century (minus the friars, who kindly left a legacy of tasty beer).

I caught up with friends who took me rambling on Dovers Hill, up from the gorgeous Cotswolds village of Chipping Camden, where we walked past the house of novelist and playwright, Graham Greene.

I was lucky enough to stay with my friends Ann and Tim who own Great Bourton House in the tiny village of Great Bourton, north of Banbury and right on the edge of the Cotswolds. It is everything you would imagine a significant, centuries-old house to be… rambling, intriguing and just plain fabulous. A great setting for a book! The welcome was wonderful too.

There were a few highlights to the trip — staying in a converted old prison in Oxford and visiting the Oxford Covered Market; visiting beautiful old buildings and churches (with incredible graveyards like this).

The most exciting part of the trip though, was meeting up and lunching in London with my lovely editor Emily Gowers and my publicist (and author extraordinaire) Noelle Holten, and bagging the excellent selfie you see at the top of this post!