Media

Fast Facts

About Christine

Christine was a corporate lawyer for a large firm in Brisbane before resigning to write novels full-time.
Christine has sold over 180,000 books worldwide. Her books have been translated variously into German, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.
Christine writes historical fiction for HarperCollins New York.

Download
zipped JPG
8″ x 12″ @ 300 dpi
(2400 x 3600 pixels)

Download
zipped JPG
7.97″ x 7.69″ @ 300 dpi
(2392 x 2307 pixels)

Download
zipped JPG
7.97″ x 9.14″ @ 300 dpi
(2391 x 2742 pixels)

About One Woman’s War

One Woman’s War is about Victoire “Paddy” Bennett, who is thought to have inspired the James Bond character of Miss Moneypenny.

Based on the true story of Paddy’s work for British Naval Intelligence during WWII as secretary for James Bond creator, Ian Fleming.

Paddy Bennett was involved in “Operation Mincemeat”, a wartime deception that fooled the Germans into believing the Allies would invade via Greece rather than Sicily. It saved many thousands of lives and has recently been the subject of a feature film starring two “Mr. Darcys”, Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen.

One Woman’s War also features Friedl Stottinger (Often called by her married name of Gaertner) who worked as a double agent for the British in WWII and her lover and dashing spy, Dusko Popov, who was thought to be one of the models on which Fleming based James Bond.

Sisters of the Resistance

About Sisters of the Resistance

Sisters of the Resistance is about two sisters living in occupied Paris during WWII who are drawn into the resistance by Catherine Dior, sister of the famous fashion designer and a heroine of France.

Catherine was Christian’s favourite sister, and “Miss Dior”, the signature perfume of La Maison Dior is named after her.

Christian Dior is a character in the novel and his 1947 premier collection, dubbed “The New Look” is brought to life with a fashion show in which Yvette, one of the protagonists, takes part. Other real figures are couturier Lucien Lelong, the Swedish consul who saved Paris, Raoul Nordling and German Ambassador, Otto Abetz. Both Catherine Dior’s dear and brave friend Liliane Dietlin and the brutal rue de la Pompe gang feature as well.

The politics of fashion: When Christian Dior’s “New Look” came out in 1947, the fashion world applauded, but ordinary women did not. Tired of clothing restrictions that were still in force but did not apply to haute couture, women attacked Dior models on a fashion shoot and ripped at their clothes.

Recently, the House of Dior has celebrated Catherine with a ready-to-wear collection inspired by her love of gardening and a new bag, called “the Caro”, which was Catherine’s nickname.

About The Juliet Code

The central characters in this story are inspired by real people.

Like The Juliet Code’s protagonist, Juliet, Noor Inayat Khan was a wireless operator who worked for the British Special Operations Executive in occupied Paris during World War II. Everyone thought Noor was too gentle to survive such dangerous conditions but she managed to elude the Germans and operate effectively for months until she was betrayed. When German counterintelligence kept her prisoner in a mansion in Paris she made several attempts to escape and fought her captors so viciously that they deemed her a dangerous prisoner and kept her handcuffed in solitary confinement.

Felix is based on Leo Marks who was in charge of decoding wireless transmissions for the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. He wrote a poem for the agent Odette Sansom to use as a cipher key, called ‘The Life that I Have” which later became famous. He was the son of the owners of the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road (made famous by a novel of that name) and after the war he became a playwright and scriptwriter.

The tough Scottish SAS captain, Mac, was inspired by a real SAS commando who escaped the Nazis by using his watch spring to pick the lock on his handcuffs.

The commandant at the Paris mansion where Juliet is held prisoner is based on a German counterintelligence officer called Hans Josef Kieffer, who was accomplished at interrogating enemy agents. He preferred friendly conversation to violence, although he did not baulk at torture when he deemed it necessary and sent many to concentration camps where they were executed.

About The Traitor’s Girl

The Traitor’s Girl was inspired by two extraordinary women who worked as British spies in World War II.

The work of Carrie as an agent provocateur employed to test out the discretion of agents before they parachuted into Nazi-occupied France is based on that of wartime spy, Marie Christine Chilver, code name “Agent Fifi”.

The character of Eve was inspired by a passing comment in the memoir of British traitor Harold “Kim” Philby, who admitted the one person he thought might suspect him of being a double agent for the Soviets was former barrister and Russian expert at MI-5, Jane Archer.

About The Wife’s Tale

Download
zipped JPG
6.023″ x 9.21″ @ 400 dpi
(2409 x 3684 pixels)

The Wife’s Tale involves a court action for criminal conversation which was available in the late eighteenth century, in which a husband could sue his wife’s lover for compensation for “debauching” her.
Criminal conversation is still a cause of action in some states of the U.S.A. In the eighteenth century, it was only available to the husband because the wife was his chattel, but now it is available to both husband and wife.
Christine used her legal background and studied various eighteenth and nineteenth century “criminal conversation” cases when researching The Wife’s Tale.
The novel is particularly influenced by the Worsley case, written about by Hallie Rubehold in her book The Scandalous Lady W, which was also made into a movie for television by the BBC. Perhaps of more relevance was the action against one of Queen Victoria’s Prime Ministers, Lord Melbourne, involving the writer and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Caroline Norton. Caroline’s fight to gain access to her children resulted in the first legislation to give mothers child custody rights.
Christine explored the Isle of Wight for the purposes of research, and a number of the locations in The Wife’s Tale are based on real places. Seagrove is the haunted bombed out shell at Appuldurcombe reimagined as a vibrant country house. Saltwater Cottage is located in roughly the same spot as Lisle Combe, a lovely bed and breakfast near Ventnor, and Theo’s gardens were inspired by the glory of the Ventnor Botanic Gardens. Delfina’s Tapas Bar is based on Il Contento Toro in Ventnor.
The judge and barristers in the trial featured in The Wife’s Tale are real eighteenth century lawyers.