Siân Rees
Siân Rees was born and brought up in Cornwall, spending much of her childhood in
boatyards and at sea. She read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford and then
spent a decade travelling and living abroad. Her first book, The Floating Brothel:
the extraordinary true story of the Lady Julian and its cargo of female convicts
bound for Botany Bay was written after living in Melbourne, Australia, and published
in 2001. It was followed by The Shadows of Elisa Lynch: how a nineteenth-
