Painting People

inspiration for the artist characters in my novel Boscarrow

I knew I wanted to write about Laura Knight when I found out not only that in 1936 she became the third woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy, but also that in 1965 her retrospective at the Academy was the first for a woman. Ever.

Knight’s most prolific period had been thirty years before that. Her male contemporaries - Stanhope Forbes, W…