LAURA BEATTY lives in the middle of Salcey, one of the very few remaining medieval hunting forests in England. The forest, she says, has provided us with food, forage, fuel, materials for building and transport - yet it is also the place where we keep our bogeys, where witches live, and where characters go in 'and come out wiser or sadder or dead or different'.

Laura Beatty is married with three children.She is the author of a biography of Lillie Langtry.

Lillie Langtry, mistress of Edward VII, was surrounded by scandal, luxury and gossip; but this biography goes beyond these outward trappings to lift the masks that Oscar Wilde, her friend and mentor, taught her to wear. It is not so much a life as a series of lives, as Lillie reinvented herself.