Amanda MacLean was born and brought up in Glasgow. As a singer, she specialises in traditional Scottish songs and is a familiar face at folk clubs in London, where she now lives. The Flax Flower is her first novel. Inspired by the old Scots ballad Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie, the novel relates not only the tragic true story told in the ballad, but the story of how the ballad itself came to be. During her historical research, the author discovered evidence of the real-life existence of one of the main characters, Andrew Lammie, previously known only from the ballad itself. (See The Sad Fate and Splendid Career of the Trumpeter of Fyvie, EFDSS Folk Music Journal vol 10 no 1.) The cover design by Andrew Shaw is in the style of an old chapbook with a woodcut.