Amanda Craig was born in South Africa in 1959, and brought up in Italy and Britain. She became an award-winning journalist in the 1980s and is author of six novels, Foreign Bodies, A Private Place, A Vicious Circle, In a Dark Wood, Love in Idleness and Hearts and Minds. Hearts and Minds was long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010. Amanda lives in London, is a reviewer and broadcaster and is also the children's book critic for The Times.
'As long as the year was green, the couple was as happy as two birds in one nest. Yet as the summer turned to autumn, the wife found she was expecting a child.'
