Author
Gill Paul is the bestselling author of ten historical novels, many of them describing real women she thinks have been marginalized or misjudged by historians. Jackie and Maria looks at the way Jackie Kennedy’s and Maria Callas’s lives began to overlap as they became rivals for Aristotle Onassis, and her new novel The Collector’s Daughter, due out in September 2021, is about Lady Evelyn Herbert, a remarkable woman who was part of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Gill lives in London with her partner, who is a light artist, and loves wild swimming year round.
In this interview, Gill and I discuss A Beautiful Rival, her research for this book, what surprised her the most when writing this book, the connections between her books, the impact these two women had on the cosmetics industry, and …
Gill and I discuss The Collector’s Daughter, the photograph that inspired this book, finding the right way to begin telling the story, the appeal of King Tutankhamen, the curse of King Tut’s tomb and how it began, and much more.
Gill discusses her latest novel Jackie and Maria, the reader who gave her the inspiration for this story, Jackie and her sister Lee’s complex relationship, the rivalry between Jackie and Maria, her year-round love of swimming, and more.
