After Oxford, Kate Fenton was employed as a researcher at the House of Commons, by a MP, and played piano on the side. She later worked for the BBC, first as a researcher, then as a features and documentary producer, in Radio Wales, the World Service, and finally Radio 4 in London. She is the author of "Vanity and Vexation". She and her husband, actor Ian Carmichael, live with two spaniels in North Yorkshire where she writes her novels.