Sara Sheridan (10:45 BST)

Award winning, best-selling writer, Sara Sheridan, whose most recent novels The Fair Botanists set in Edinburgh in 1824 and The Secrets of Blythswood Square set in Glasgow in 1846, excels at weaving real life historical figures into compelling narratives.

She will talk about the art and discipline of combining the genres of fiction and historical biography; about her fascination with the past and how it triggers plot lines; and of treasures to be found in archives, as revealed in the current reissue of an earlier novel On Starlit Seas, inspired by the Victorian travel writer, Maria Graham, based on Sheridan’s research in the archive of Graham’s own publisher, John Murray, in the National Library of Scotland. Sheridan will also reveal in a twist worthy of fiction what drew her to re-issuing On Starlit Seas.

In conversation with Rodge Glass

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