Maeve Haran is a smartly-dressed, middle-aged woman, who punctuates most sentences with laughter and talks passionately about the act of writing and about her children. There is little about her that suggests she is the author of a string of best-selling novels and nothing that suggests she is the author of Having It All. Where's the power suit? Where's the briefcase?
Having It All, Haran's first novel, was published in 1991 and has since been translated into 26 languages, sold millions internationally and has even been made into a TV series in Korea. What is perhaps more significant is the fact that the book prompted more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles.
The controversial issue in Having It All, was the idea that combining motherhood and a career was a less than ideal way of life. The compromises and difficulties faced by the working mother have since been chewed over ad nauseam (most recently in a BBC 2 series on parenthood called - guess what - Having It All) but at the time it was explosive. Haran was either feted for voicing the inadequacy many working mothers feel, or accused of setting the feminist movement back decades. "I think a lot of people who hadn't actually read the book thought I wanted to drag women back to the kitchen," she says. "In fact, what I was actually saying was based on my own experiences of feeling there had to be a better way of doing things."
Controversy or no, Haran had obviously found a very popular and durable formula; All That She Wants, her most recent novel, is the fifth in a string of novels that have sold more than two million worldwide. What sets them apart from many of their easy-reading equivalents, such as the novels of Jilly Cooper or Penny Vincenzi, is their content. Maeve describes them as "unserious books about serious things" and that sums it up well. All That She Wants, for example, combines the popular love-and-romance elements of pulp fiction, with the issues of single parenthood, infertility and the onset of Alzheimer's in a beloved parent. These subjects are often discussed at conferences or on radio talkshows but rarely in light novels.
"I write about what women talk about - what my friends talk about," Haran says. "I'd been thinking about fatherhood a lot when I wrote the book and especially about the difference between my father and the father of my children, who has so much input into their lives. At the same time, my close friend had to look at the options facing her when her mother had severe dementia, so that got absorbed into the book too."
Although Maeve made her name with a book about working women, she claims to be more interested in families, as they are "so rich and varied". She also dislikes the idea of writing solely about career women, pointing out that very few women are actually career-oriented, although an increasing number of women work outside the home.
"It's a backdrop to their lives, it's not the be all and end all, so I tend to make my female characters the same."
Ironically, Maeve was the epitome of one of those career women during her own, varied working career. After studying law at Oxford "because my two older brothers did and I thought it was the most glamorous thing to do", she spent a short time in book publishing before starting on a career in journalism. Numerous magazine articles later, she started at the bottom again as a junior researcher in TV, and eventually became the editor on the ground-breaking Six O'Clock Show.
From 1974 to 1986, she worked with Michael Aspel, Chris Tarrant, Danny Baker and Paula Yates on the weekly programme which took a humorous approach to current affairs. She left when she had her first child at the age of 37 and, after making a documentary series called The Good Life Guide about the new rich, started writing full-time.
She says she never misses the TV world and she's certainly passionate about writing - much of the interview seems to lead back to her delight in her chosen career. "It's so totally my own thing - TV was always a collaboration." She now has three children - Georgia (11), Holly (9) and Jimmy (4) - and lives with her Scottish "comortgagee, partner, whatever" in London. Her novels continue to offer strong viewpoints on emotive issues; the main characters in All That She Wants deliver several stinging attacks on those who place their elderly parents in nursing homes rather than caring for them at home, whereas in reality many have little choice.
"It can be a problem," she sighs.
Maeve Haran's latest novel, All That She Wants, is published by Little Brown, priced £9.99 stg