She moved with her family to Scotland when she was four years old and spent her childhood in the village of Newton Mearns near Glasgow.
In 1989, after years of writing and rejections during which her works won some competitions, a literary agent became interested in The Wild Hunt, one of her books.
A year later the book won a Betty Trask Award, which was presented to the author at Whitehall by the Prince of Wales.
Chadwick is renowned for her extensive research into the medieval period and particularly so in the area of the Marshal and Bigod families.
Her novels about the thirteenth-century magnate William Marshal, The Greatest Knight (2005) and The Scarlet Lion (2006), have brought her international acclaim.