Why have you published Dangerous Women under a pseudonym?

(Hope Adams is otherwise known as the hugely successful Adele Geras.) Because it’s a completely different kind of book from any I’ve written before and will appeal to a much bigger audience, I think. It’s the first time I’ve written a story based on a real event. Also, it’s a nice change to have a name that everyone can pronounce! Geras has always been pronounced wrongly! It’s with a hard G and rhymes exactly with TERRACE.

You beautifully describe the fabrics used to make the quilt at the beginning of some chapters. Why was that?

That was almost my favourite thing about writing this book! I love those and call them ‘patches.’ My friend Carolyn Ferguson, who’s a great expert on the real Rajah Quilt, has slides of every single bit of fabric used in the Quilt. She let me have sight of these and I really wanted to put them in, to bring the making of the Quilt right into the foreground of the story.

Kezia is such a great character - a strong feminist voice at a time when women had very little say. Was it important to you to tell a feminist story within this book?

I think that I have made her more feminist than she would have been in real life. That said, we know from her diaries and from the fact that she worked very hard to improve conditions for women in prisons that she was much involved in good works from a Christian perspective. She was very devout and pious but I do believe she would have been a tireless fighter against injustice and also would have understood that these women were often forced by their circumstances into crime.

What message would you like readers to take away from Dangerous Women?

Mainly, I’d like readers to enjoy the story and if there’s a moral it’s probably in the hymn. Teach me my God and King. Basically, anything you do whole heartedly and well is of value and doing things together for the benefit of everyone is obviously going to make a difference to our lives.

Your daughter Sophie Hannah is also an author, do you ever compare notes when writing new books?

Sophie has been of more help to me than I can express with this book. She was there from the very beginning and has had enormous input for plot and we discuss things all the time. I am more reliant on her than she is on me. I just read her books when they’re finished and say ‘that’s marvellous’ because it is! But with Hope Adams, she’s been there every step of the way. My younger daughter too has been very helpful…. it’s a real boon to have them to call on.