About Me — Madeleine McDonald

I left school with a certificate of shorthand typing in my pocket and the intention of working my way around the world, as an aunt had done a generation earlier. I got no further than France, where I settled in the ‘three-cornered land’ where France borders Switzerland and Germany.

Translation is one way of writing English for a living, although I fell into the job by accident and learned on the hoof. I owe a debt of gratitude to my first boss, who encouraged me to ‘do that again and do it better’. He also told me to read the King James Bible for ten minutes on arriving at work, ‘to improve your English’. In a similar vein, young translators today are advised to read The Economist to absorb its style.

His unorthodox training worked and eventually I spent thirty years working for various international organisations, including the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the World Health Organisation in Geneva and International Court of Justice in The Hague.

I came to fiction writing late. In my 30s. I began to write magazine articles on the side, progressing to fiction later. I have published newspaper columns, short stories, radio scripts and full-length novels. My latest novel, A Shackled Inheritance, is available at www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2S8NPL2