Muriel Arnold

Muriel Arnold was brought up on a farm in Lincolnshire, educated at Barrowby School and Grantham Technical College, learnt a lot as a member of Grantham Young Farmer's Club and got to know her native Lincolnshire as a member of the Kesteven Aces Cycling Club. Then she had to earn her living.

She was secretary/translator for Marconi Espanola in Madrid and formed part of a secretarial team with Esso Standard Libya at an outpost in the Sahara.

She joined the seagoing staff of Cunard, was promoted to Senior Assistant Purser, Queen Mary, then Social Secretary, Queen Elizabeth 2 for World Cruises.

Addicted to writing from an early age she listened to her father, aunts and uncles and wrote her first novel, The Run of Time. She felt remarkably at ease wandering around Lincolnshire in 1895. This was followed by its sequel, The Triumph of Deceit set in 1920, and takes the reader from Lincolnshire to Spain and back.

After leaving Cunard and unable to 'swallow the anchor' she travelled by cargo ship to Peru to explore the ancient sites of the Inca and pre-Columbian civilisations. Her latest book, Swallow the Anchor, is a modern novel of love and loss on a cargo ship from Southampton to South America, long after the Inca Empire had been conquered.