Hazel Marshall
About Author
Hazel Marshall was born in Scotland and has lived there most of her life. Troublesome Angels and Flying Machines was inspired by her love of the Medieval Period where 'invention was a matter of fascination for people. They were constantly questioning how things worked, how they came to be invented'.
At the time of writing Hazel was reading about Marco Polo, how his adventures were not always believed by his countrymen despite his death bed assertion that 'he only told half of it'. She used him as inspiration for her story, creating a fictional great-nephew, Blanco, to follow in his audacious footsteps.
Hazel explores many themes in Troublesome Angels and Flying Machines, particularly those connected to invention and experimentation. What is it 'that drives people to break away from conventional theories of safety and perceived wisdom to create new and exciting ideas with little thought of the danger they may, or may not, contain?' She also delves into questions of appearance, how 'surfaces can easily deceive and glamour and glamorous people can be very dangerous things indeed'.
When Hazel was about five or six she wrote tiny stories. They were all about one sentence long and had no punctuation. She wrote her first book when she was 12. It was very much inspired by Enid Blyton and involved four girls on a cruise ship on the Rhine trying to find a missing emerald necklace. The girls were called Julie, Julia, Juliet and Hilary (she really liked the name Julie!).
Since then she has found many other 'favourite' authors, from Tolstoy to Joan Aitken, but she has never lost her love for adventure stories.
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