Jane was born in the Chiltern Hills, in Buckinghamshire, a wooded area some 40 miles north-west of London and this is where she now lives - in a flint and brick cottage on the edge of a wood - with her husband, Michael Vaughan-Rees, a writer and language specialist.

For many years they lived right in the centre of London, in Waterloo, where they were active in campaigning to prevent the area becoming overrun by office blocks.  Jane notably launched the successful Save the Oxo Tower Campaign, to guarantee the future of one of the few outstanding art deco buildings in the London area.

Jane’s mother was a distinguished stained glass artist, her father a surveyor and architect, specialising in the restoration of old buildings.  They bought a Georgian manor house in Aylesbury, and the whole family set about restoring it.  (Jane’s diaries for the period typically refer to ‘mixing two hundredweight of cement for Daddy’).

All five Waller children emerged from this background with artistic temperaments: Edmund is a landscape architect, Lynda a stained glass artist, Vanessa a potter, and Jeffrey specialises in providing the lighting for major architectural and artistic projects.

Jane herself never stops her search for innovation and intends to divide her time between producing ceramics, writing fiction, working in her garden and allotment and travelling abroad.