Rachel Billington has written twenty novels for adults and almost half as many for children. She was President of English PEN until 2000 and remains a Vice-President. In January 2012, she was awarded an OBE. Billington's novels cannot be pinned down to any one recurrent theme or setting. A lover's escape to Chile (One Summer); a released prisoner searching for his past victim (Bodily Harm); a sequel to Jane Austen's Emma (Perfect Happiness) – these are just a few of her storylines. Her writing is partly influenced by her work with the national newspaper for prisoners, Inside Time. Her new project is a major novel about the Gallipoli campaign, Glory, partly inspired by the experiences of her grandfather, who was killed during the Battle for Scimitar Hill in 1915. Rachel Billington is married, has four children and five grandchildren, and lives in Dorset
