At about twelve-years-old my appetite was whet for historical fiction when I discovered Jean Plaidy. I devoured them and they were never ending. Plaidy was really called Eleanor Hibbert and wrote under three pseudonyms – Philippa Carr and Victoria Holt were the others – so I never ran out of new ones to read. Plaidy was my favourite and I still have some of my old dog-eared copies. Historical fiction has moved on since then (not least for their covers and some of the titles) but they still have a certain nostalgic 70s charm.