When I published my novelabout Lucy Walter, my husband asked, 'Do you think anyone is going to be interested in her?' As it happened, many people were.

Lucyis believedto be the ancestress of Diana, Princess of Wales. Lucy's portrait is in Althrop, the ancestral home of the Spencer family andanother portrait of Lucy hangs in Scolton Manor, now a museum, ten miles outof Haverfordwest.

When the book came out, the local bookshop was crowded with people purporting to be related to Lucy. Many of them came from Rosemarket, a village a few miles out of Haverfordwest, where the Walter familyspent some time in the 'Great House'.

I'm sometimes asked how closely haveI kept to Lucy's lifestory. I have researched in the Record Office, Haverfordwest and in the National Library of Wales andI have readcontemporary accounts of her life. My novel followsLucy'sstory in chronological order, tying it in with Charles's life as far as I can trace it. Therefore, I call my work 'faction': fiction based on fact. (I have made upintimate conversations, but I follow Lucy and the Court to The Hague, keeping the dates correct, for example).

I have atheory, and facts of a sort, to support my belief that Lucy and Charles were married in Saint Thomas a Beckett Church, Haverfordwest. Why was the Marriage Register for that particular year requisitioned by Parliament and returned with the relevant page missing?

But problems arise: When Lucy was eighteen, her rogue of a father sold her to the PuritanColonel, Algernon Sydney, for fifty broad pieces of gold. Before Algernon could claim Lucyhe was calledaway by his regiment and she was passed to his brother, Colonel Robert Sydney. It could now be argued that Charles and Lucy met andfell in love inThe Hague. Later, she gave birth to their son.

Charles acknowledged James as his son and supported Lucy, James and her daughter, Mary, whom she had by another man.

I wanted to write about Lucy.I felt her presence strongly when working on the book.Lucy died in her late twenties, a prostitute, destitute,on the streets of Paris and Charles paid for her funeral.He had many loves and mistresses, the most famous of whom was Nell Gwynn, the orange seller, but His first love was his Welsh mistress, Lucy Walter, and I wanted itacknowledged.