Manda Scott | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1962 (age 61–62) Glasgow, Scotland |
| Pen name | MC Scott |
| Website | |
| mandascott | |
Manda Scott (born 1962)[1] is a former Scottish veterinary surgeon who is now a novelist, blogger, columnist and occasional broadcaster. Born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland,[2] she trained at the University of Glasgow School of Veterinary Medicine and now lives and works in Shropshire.[3]
She made her name initially as a crime writer. Her first novel, Hen's Teeth was shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize.[4] Her fourth, No Good Deed, was nominated for the 2003 Edgar Award.[5]
Her subsequent novels, Night Mares, Stronger than Death and No Good Deed, for which she was hailed as 'one of Britain's most important crime writers' by The Times, were published by Headline and are now published, along with her other books, by Transworld Publishers, an imprint of Random House.
Alongside her original contemporary thrillers, she has written two sets of four historical thrillers. "The Boudica series" were her first historical novels, of which Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle was the first. Rooted in the pre-Roman world of ancient Britain - and the Britannia it became - the novels 'give us back our own history',[6] exploring the worlds of druids (called dreamers in the book and portrayed as shamans), warriors and the Roman occupation that, in Scott's eyes, destroyed a once-great civilisation.[7] The books centre around two primary characters: the girl Breaca, who grows into the woman who takes the title 'Boudica' (meaning 'She who Brings Victory'[8]) and her brother Bán, who, for much of the four books, is her nemesis.
Scott's Rome series (written under the ungendered name MC Scott),[9] and beginning with The Emperor's Spy, are spy thrillers, set in the same fictional universe with some of the surviving characters from the Boudica series. The first novel in the series follows the life of Sebastos Pantera, the spy whose name means 'Leopard' as he comes in from the cold of a mission in Britannia to spy for the Emperor Nero at the time of the Great Fire of Rome. In subsequent books, Pantera faces his nemesis, Saulos (aka Paul of Tarsus) in The Coming of the King, dives deep into the loss of a legion's eagle in The Eagle of the Twelfth, (the Twelfth Legion, apparently, did in fact lose their eagle, while the Ninth Legion, subjects of Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, didn't) and returns to Rome for the Year of the Four Emperors in The Art of War.
Between the two major historical series, she wrote The Crystal Skull, a dual timeline novel entered around a mythic Mayan skull, with a historical thread set in the Tudor era and a contemporary thriller set in modern-day Cambridge.
She began her dual time line novels with a fast-paced, 'swift and vigorous'[10] thriller, Into the Fire, which explores the truth behind the myth of Jeanne d'Arc – and the impact those revelations could have on modern day (2014) France.
A Treachery of Spies, winner of the 2019 McIlvanney Prize,[11] is another dual time line, this explores the impacts of actions by the Maquis, the SOE, the Jedburghs, and in particular, the nascent CIA on the present. It was announced in May 2020[12] that veteran Harry Potter producer David Barron, and Enriched Media Group have secured all TV, film and ancillary rights to A Treachery of Spies and a TV adaptation was planned.
In 2010, she founded the Historical Writers' Association,[13] of which she remained Chair until 2015.
She has written regular columns for The Herald (formerly The Glasgow Herald), reviews[14] and columns[15] for The Independent, intermittent columns for The Guardian,[16] The Daily Telegraph, The Times and Huffington Post,[17] and has appeared occasionally on BBC Radio 4.[18]
