Non - fiction writer and author Carol Gould will be attending the historical fiction panel and discuss her research for Spitfire girls and her other works. There will be a reading from one of her books and there be also time for question and answers.
Carol Gould
Carol Gould was born in Philadelphia and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Temple University. She came to Britain in 1976 to study documentary film history with Edgar Anstey. She continued postgraduate research at University of Kent on the history of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, Stratford East. From 1981 to 1991 she was Commissioning Editor for Drama at Anglia Television, working on Cause Celebre by Terence Rattigan; thirty-six hours of PD James adaptations and other drama series. In 1996 she produced a documentary that premiered at the 1997 Berlin Festival, Long Night’s Journey into Day, about the year after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin. In the past fifteen years Carol has produced documentaries about the Benjamin Franklin House, Jewish Evacuees, the Bevin Boys and mixed-race GI babies.
In 2000 the Second Intifadah and the burgeoning hostility in Europe and Britain to Americans and Israel moved Carol to establish her own political magazine, Current Viewpoint. She had become increasingly aware of anger directed at her in social and professional milieux. Her book, Don’t Tread on Me; anti-Americanism Abroad was published by Social Affairs Unit in 2009 and by Encounter Books in the USA. Her novel, Spitfire Girls. about the women who flew for Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War, was published in a 2009 paperback edition by Random House. Carol is working on a second novel, A Room at Camp Pickett, based on her play produced at the Africa Centre in 2004 about her late mother’s experiences as a WAC in the US Army protesting segregation of black soldiers. Carol is also working on a book about revisionist history through opera and theatre. She has appeared on BBC Any Questions?, the World Service, Woman’s Hour, Press TV and Sky News.
Sarah Matthias 
I have four teenage children and live with my husband and two dogs, Holly and Ruby, in Islington. I wrote my first book The Riddle of the Poisoned Monk for my children as a bedtime story. I never intended to become a writer and I fell into writing totally by accident. After leaving university I worked as a producer for BBC Radio Four producing documentary radio programmes. I then qualified as a Barrister and was a senior Lecturer in Law for many years in a University whilst my children were small. I now try to write full time which is a tall order with four children and two dogs! I just do my best! I am trained as a lawyer not a historian. History is simply a hobby but I try to do my research meticulously for my writing.
You can find out more of Sarah Matthias work on her website www.sarahmatthias.co.uk
Elizabeth Chadwick's first venture into fiction was telling herself a story about fairies when she was three years old. Inspired by a programme about knights in armour, she wrote her first novel in her teens. Her work was spotted by leading literary agent Carole Blake and Elizabeth's first novel The Wild Hunt won a Betty Trask Award. Elizabeth is renowned for her ability to bring the past to life and her biographical novels set in the Middle Ages have won extensive acclaim. THE SCARLET LION was nominated by Richard Lee, founder of the Historical Novel Society, as one of the landmark historical novels of the decade.