Lindsey Davis, historical novelist, was born in Birmingham, England during the 1950s. Having taken a degree in English literature at Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall), she became a civil servant. Her first novel featuring the Roman "detective", Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs, was published in 1989 and was the start of her runaway success as a writer of historical whodunnits. A further thirteen Falco novels have followed, as well as a "straight" historical novel set in the same period (the reign of Vespasian), The Course of Honour (1998). She has won many literary awards.