Margaret Southall was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, (now West Midlands), England, but was raised in Eastbourne, a resort town on the South Coast.

Her first ‘published’ literary work was a story for an annual that was written, illustrated and hand bound by her elementary school’s senior class. Among her other juvenilia was a play about Robin Hood never completed because Margaret used up the all the pad before she finished the play.

A bookworm since she learned to read, Margaret always wanted to write since she was a child, and journalism was the obvious choice bywhich she could earn a living by. Her first job was with a freelance journalist serving London daily, evening and Sunday papers, television and radio. A stint at the town’s bi-weekly as a reporter and then sub- editor followed before she immigrated to Canada. There she was a reporter- editor on a weekly newspaper, then as city editor of a daily paper, and, for a short time, she worked on a weekly in the United States of America.

She graduated with honours from a scriptwriting course, and was a runner-up and prizewinner from among 3,000 entries in a Toronto Star Short Story Contest, both of which provided the incentive for her to tackle her first novel, A Jacketing Concern. The mystery is set in Regency England, a period that has always fascinated her — not surprising for someone who lived in the neighbourhood of a former Napoleonic War redoubt and martello towers, and a short train ride from Brighton, home of the Prince Regent’s Royal Pavilion

Margaret is a member of Ottawa Independent Writers and the Historical Novel Society.

Currently she and her husband, a newspaper  publisher, live in Ottawa, Canada, where she is researching her next book.