I studied Garden History as part of my degree course, never thinking that nearly twenty years later I’d be using it. Most of my research involved going to some of the great 18th symbolic gardens – Stowe, Stourhead, Stancombe, Chiswick House and (my favourite) Rousham. I still had a lot of my old course books but most useful was the more recent Gentlemen and Players by Tim Mowl (History Press 2004).

I was writing Nice Girls Do in 2004, the tercentenary of John Wood’s birth. John Wood designed the Bath that is famous today – the Royal Crescent, the Circus and so on – and he was also fascinated by druids and King Bladud, the mythical founder of Bath. Two books helped: Kirsten Elliot’s The Myth-maker (Akeman Press 2004) and Obsession: John Wood and the Creation of Georgian Bath (The Building of Bath Museum 2004).