Manda Scott (born 1962) is a former Scottish veterinary surgeon who is now a novelist, blogger, columnist and occasional broadcaster. Born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, she trained at the University of Glasgow School of Veterinary Medicine and now lives and works in Shropshire. Writing She made her name initially as a crime writer. Her first novel, Hen's Teeth was shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize. Her fourth, No Good Deed, was nominated for the 2003 Edgar Award. Her subsequent novels, Night Mares, Stronger than Death and No Good Deed, for which she was hailed as 'one of Britain's most important crime writers' by The Times, were published by Headline and are now published, along with her other books, by Transworld Publishers, an imprint of Random House. Alongside her original contemporary thrillers, she has written two sets of four historical thrillers. "The Boudica series" were her first historical novels, of which Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle was the first. Rooted in the pre-Roman world of ancient Britain - and the Britannia it became - the novels 'give us back our own history', exploring the worlds of druids (called dreamers in the book and portrayed as shamans), warriors and the Roman occupation that, in Scott's eyes, destroyed a once-great civilisation. The books centre around two primary characters: the girl Breaca, who grows into the woman who takes the title 'Boudica' (meaning 'She who Brings Victory') and her brother Bán, who, for much of the four books, is her nemesis. Scott's Rome series (written under the ungendered name MC Scott), and beginning with The Emperor's Spy, are spy thrillers, set in the same fictional universe with some of the surviving characters from the Boudica series. The first novel in the series follows the life of Sebastos Pantera, the spy whose name means 'Leopard' as he comes in from the cold of a mission in Britannia to spy for the Emperor Nero at the time of the Great Fire of Rome. In subsequent books, Pantera faces his nemesis, Saulos (aka Paul of Tarsus) in The Coming of the King, dives deep into the loss of a legion's eagle in The Eagle of the Twelfth, (the Twelfth Legion, apparently, did in fact lose their eagle, while the Ninth Legion, subjects of Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, didn't) and returns to Rome for the Year of the Four Emperors in The Art of War. Between