Twentieth century conflicts, and their effects on individuals and families are subjects she returned to frequently.

Her debut, Zennor in Darkness (1993) was set in World War I. Of her many novels, most are works of historical fiction, ranging in time and setting from ancient Rome in Counting the Stars (2008) to the Cold War world of espionage in Exposure (2016). Her final novel, Birdcage Walk, was published in 2017, as was her last poetry collection, Inside the Wave. In a career spanning three decades she published fifteen novels, three short story collections, prize-winning children's fiction and twelve collections of poetry.

The novel has an underlying theme of mortality with the remnants of a life that is left behind us, understandable as we learn from the media that the author is suffering from a serious illness.Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire, England in 1952.

Helen Dunmore invariably writes accomplished, poetic fiction, and this is an engaging and absorbing read, but I was not quite so captured by this book as by her more recent publications-though this may be down to very high expectations of her ability to deliver superb writing. Elizabeth is a challenging (for her family) and quite complex individual for a woman of her time: headstrong and rather determined to do what she wants to do. Tredevant has a secret about his first, deceased wife, Lucie, which the reader knows about from the very opening of the novel, but Elizabeth only uncovers slowly throughout the story. When the political ferment with the French Revolution across the Channel starts to affect the economic climate in England, builders of expensive houses like Elizabeth’s husband suffer from the downturn. Lizzie’s mother is the political writer Julia Fawkes, who falls pregnant at the age of forty to her second husband, Augustus Gleeson. He is constructing an ambitious terrace of large houses in Clifton, with spectacular and expensive views over the Avon. Elizabeth (or Lizzie as she is mostly known), narrates the story in the first person, and is a young bride, newly married to the speculative builder John Tredevant, generally known for some reason as Diner. Bristol in the latter decade of the 18 th century.

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore