About Lara Flecker

I live in London with my husband and three children, but I was born in Wiltshire and still think of myself as a country girl. When I was growing up, I found reading difficult and spent a lot of time sitting on my bedroom floor, knitting and listening to audio tapes. I’m dyslexic so my writing wasn’t much better, but for some reason I always wanted to be a children's author.

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At twenty-two I went to art school and trained as a theatrical costume maker. After a brief spell making loincloths for films such as Gladiator, I moved sideways into the museum world. My first job was for Historic Royal Palaces where I worked with the textile conservation team. One of the strangest things I ever did there was spend an evening in the Tower of London, cleaning the ermine on the Crown Jewels, attended by an armed guard.

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In 2001 I applied for a post at the V&A, where I have worked ever since. It’s my job to mount costumes for display and my first publication was a non-fiction book on this subject. Costume mounting is all about bringing clothes to life. Sometimes the outfits in the museum look so real when they are dressed onto mannequins that I almost believe they can move. This is where the idea for my second book came from.