Born in Gloucestershire in 1932, Malcolm was educated in Shropshire, Scotland, South Africa, and Bedford before going to Falmouth School of Art and the Slade. He taught English in Sweden, had his first novel published in 1962, became an encyclopedia editor at Aldus Books, then freelanced from 1966, when he also taught graphics at Hornsey.

He became a full-time historical novelist after 1974 with the publication of THE WORLD FROM ROUGH STONES, an epic about the building of Summit Railway Tunnel on the Manchester-Leeds Railway in 1839.

He moved to Ireland with his wife and two daughters and wrote a steady stream of some 30 historical novels between then and 2001, when the last, ROSE OF NANCEMELLIN, was published.

In 1982 he won the Romantic Times "Best Historical Novel" award for GOLDENEYE, a tale set in the Canadian prairie in the 1920s and '30s.

There is a full list of his work with plot summaries and critical reviews, good and bad, on his own website at www.malcolmmacdonald.org, where a few copies of most of them are for sale - along with some 3,000 books from his private research library. When they have gone he intends moving to a smaller house and writing the final novel, which has been gestating for the past 20 years.

Headstrong Rose Tremayne, housemaid to the snobbish Lady Carclew of Nancemellin House, has a talent for mimicry which frequently leads her into mischief.

Dressed in her mistress's clothes she discovers Louis Redmile-Smith, half drowned on Nancemellin's beach and he assumes Rose is Lady Carclew's ward. When he returns to thank Lady Carclew, Rose's deception is discovered and she is dismissed, but Louis is not so easily swayed from his devotion to her.

Finding the stage more suited to her talents, Rose's career leads her towards the London music halls, but is she also being led further away from Louis?