Barbara Cleverly was born in the north of England and is a graduate of Durham University. A former teacher, she has spent her working life in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk; she now lives in Cambridge. She has one son and five step-children. Her Joe Sandilands series of books set against the background of the British Raj was inspired by the contents of a battered old tin trunk that she found in her attic. Out of it spilled two centuries of memories of a family – especially a great uncle who spent a lot of time in India – whose exploits and achievements marched in time with the flowering of the British Empire.