Penguin Reader's Group: THE FOURTH QUEEN is based on a true story. Where did you first hear about the real Helen Gloag, the novel's heroine, and what made you want to write about her?

Debbie Taylor: I was on a touring holiday in Perthshire with my partner, the poet W N Herbert, and we were following our noses, really. I'd found a book of local history in Crail and he was reading bits out to me as we visited some of the more obscure and out-of-the-way historic sites. When he came across a reference to a 'Scottish Empress', I knew I had to find out more. We visited Muthill, the village Helen lived in, had scones and jam in the inevitable Scottish tea room, and wandered around the church graveyard. It was the graveyard that made me decide to write the book. Seeing the name 'Gloag' on a row of ancient mossy gravestones made me realise that a red-haired teenager named Helen Gloag had actually lived here, had probably worshipped at this very church. Her extraordinary abduction, this bizarre fairytale, had actually happened. The other thing that made me want to write about Helen was her character. I read that she had 'discorded with her parents and left them, taking nothing but what she had on'. What kind of girl would take off like that, so dramatically? Why might she have been fighting with her parents? By the time I'd developed some hypotheses, I was hooked...

PRG: How many of the characters are real, and how many did you have to invent?

The four queens are all real. Douvia and Zara were both treated by Dr Lempriere, and Batoom was the chief queen at that time. Dr Lempriere's description of the poisoned Zara is very vivid - in reality it was Zara's illness that caused the Emperor to seek out the reluctant doctor. Poor Dr Lempriere! He didn't know what to make of these women. In his book (published in 1791) he reports that Douvia tried to seduce him - a truly terrifying prospect, that would have led to his death had the Emperor found out. Actually, this all happened around a decade after Helen was abducted, but I concertina-ed the time to coincide with her first year in the harem. Writing fiction is wonderful because it allows you to pick'n'mix your favourite bits of history. Julia Crisp really existed, but visited the harem some thirty years before the good doctor. And the Emperor was real, of course, though the historical accounts differ as to whether he was urbane and sophisticated or brutal and avaricious (if you've read the book, you'll know I decided he was probably all these things).

PRG: Who did I make up? Some of the minor characters: Lungile, the giant eunuch; Naseem, the Berber runaway; Malia, the chief midwife; Reema, the old slave.

Microphilus was partly true, partly made up. When I found out that the dwarf Jeffrey Hudson (aka Lord Minimus, aka Microphilus) had been captured by Barbary pirates and enslaved in the seventeenth century, I tracked down his little book, A New Yeere's Gift, in the British Museum Library and the sheer force of his personality - philosophical, self-deprecating, witty - lodged itself in my mind. I found myself wondering, 'What if he had been captured at the same time as Helen?' Although Hudson was English, I transplanted him to Fife and invented his rejecting aristocrat mother and his adoption by a sweet simpleton fishwife. This allowed me to make him sophisticated (I thought his guilt-driven father would have paid for a decent education), but with a deep respect for the poor.

PRG: One of the most interesting things about the novel is the fascinating world of the Emperor's harem, which you write about so convincingly that it seems incredibly real and full of life. Was it hard to conjure up that world? Did you have to do lots of research?

I've probably read every historical text that exists on that period in Moroccan history, but I didn't learn to read Arabic, so my reading was limited to texts published in English. These provided most of the detail in the book - clothes, food, architecture, customs - but any atmosphere I manage to convey comes from my own experiences in the developing world. Before my daughter was born, I spent much of my time living in traditional societies in Africa and Asia, writing about their lives. In Zimbabwe I stayed with a traditional midwife, learning about magic and traditional medicine; I've stayed with poor women in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco; I've worked in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania; in Botswana I was initiated into the local Batlokwa tribe. I think spending time in communities with largely traditional lifestyles gives an insight into how people might have thought and behaved in the eighteenth century. Family customs are similar; as are cooking and fetching water; fertility, childbirth, sanitation. Lifestyles that might seem strange or even primitive to an outsider are usually completely logical and convivial when you experience them first-hand.

PRG: From your experience researching and writing about the harem did you draw any conclusions about what life must have been like for the women who lived there? Was it like a gilded prison or did they have a freedom and authority that other women didn't?

From today's perspective it was definitely a gilded prison. The idea of being locked in, hidden from sight and forbidden to work makes me shudder. But from the perspective of most woman in the eighteenth century, the Emperor's harem would have seemed like a paradise. For a start, food was plentiful and delicious - descriptions of a typical Moroccan feast in those days are mouth-watering. Secondly, harem concubines did not have to do any onerous physical work, on the land or in the home. Thirdly, they would very rarely have had intercourse with their husband (depending on the husband, that might have been good or bad!). Compared with the alternatives open to them - monotonous diet, tedious toil, demanding spouse - most harem women probably felt they were living charmed lives.

How privileged they felt would have depended on where they were from, however. In societies of sub-Saharan Africa, women traditionally lived relatively independent lives, as Batoom describes. They were allocated land by their husband's clan, which they used to grow food for their children and exchange for other items they might need. They might also have had their own goats and cattle, raised from animals provided as dowry gifts. This gave them a power lacking in the harem and I can imagine these women feeling restless. But for concubines from northern Africa, where all but the poorest women are always sequestered, things would have felt different. These women were simply exchanging a poor prison for a rich one. Indeed the huge harem would have been a much more interesting place to live than the normal claustrophobic Islamic household of a few wives and children, plus a handful of slave-mistresses.

PRG: You founded and still edit Mslexia magazine, dedicated to helping women who want to write. How did you find writing your own novel - was it easy to take your own advice?

No! I did everything wrong, that's why I feel qualified to advise people on the right way to do it. Because I was earning a living as a freelance, writing about what used to be called the Third World, I was continually putting aside the novel to earn money researching, say, violence against women for the World Health Organisation. It was fascinating, and I'm not complaining - but in retrospect, I think I should have bitten the bullet, taken out a bank loan, and been seriously poor for a year while I finished The Fourth Queen. It's so hard to write a novel in fits and starts - especially a long novel like this, set in an unfamiliar time and place. In the end it was ten years from that first holiday in Perthshire to the day I completed the book. During that time I wrote a book about single mothers (My Children, My Gold, Virago), edited two books of women's writing (also for Virago), wrote reports for Anti Slavery International, Oxfam, UNICEF and WHO, moved house three times, had two IVF attempts and a baby, and started Mslexia magazine. Helen Dunmore asked me once how many novels I might have written if I'd put all that energy into writing fiction instead. The question really made me sit up. I think women find it hard to dig their heels in and really commit to their creativity. So Mslexia is as much about cultivating a creative attitude as it is about the practicalities of becoming a writer. (To find out more call 0191 261 6656, email debbie@mslexia.demon.co.uk or visit www.mslexia.co.uk.)

PRG: Finally, can you recommend two books to our Readers Groups?

This is so difficult. You've probably all read Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, Helen Dunmore's The Siege and Maggie O'Farrell's After You'd Gone. So I want to recommend a couple of gems you might not have come across yet. The first is Blackbird: A childhood lost by Jennifer Lauck (Abacus), an extraordinary memoir of a girl made to grow up long before her time. Insightful, brave and completely lacking in self-pity, it doesn't put a foot wrong. I put it down thinking I probably wouldn't read a better book this year. (Oprah liked it too, but don't let that put you off!) My second choice is The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison (Fourth Estate), a strange novel about a man who becomes obsessed with a nameless Aleut woman in Alaska. It's the underlying philosophy that's special in this book; the Zen-like quality of the woman, the slow unfolding of the story. As in Blackbird, the writing is precise and crafted. If you haven't discovered them yet, I really envy you! You have such a treat in store.

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