On my radar: Kit de Waal’s cultural highlights

The award-winning author on the folk musician who inspired her second novel, a Parisian celebration of black artists in France, and the wonder of Whitby AbbeyBorn in Birmingham in 1960, Mandy Theresa O’Loughlin is better known as author Kit de Waal. After a career as a magistrate specialising in adoption and foster care, she studied creative writing at Oxford Brookes University. Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon, was published in 2016, winning the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year award.