About Wendy Holden - www.wendyholden.net
I was born in 1965 in Yorkshire. From an early age I wanted to be a writer and Yorkshire was a great inspiration in this respect. A few miles away from where we lived was Haworth Parsonage, home of the Bronte sisters (and their naughty brother). I often went to Haworth on my bicycle as a teenager to wonder at the fact that the sisters managed to derive so much inspiration despite being cut off from the world in the middle of those bleak and misty moors. I was also awed by Charlotte’s tiny waist as demonstrated by the dresses on display in the Parsonage. How she could write so much while being so tightly trussed?
At school I had the enormous good fortune to stumble into the hands of one of those legendary beings, The Life-Changing Teacher. Vanda Symons arrived in a flurry of high-necked white blouses, silver lockets, high heels and a chocolate obsession. Up until that point my favourite subject had been history (entirely because I adored my history teacher, Mr Perrin) and I had vague visions of dusting off manuscripts in National Trust basements for a living.
But then came Vanda, bringing alive as never before the Romantic poets and Shakespeare and I began to realise for the first time that English Literature was more, far more, than just a vase of flowers on the table of life, a mere decoration and superfluity. Hell, no. Within Shakespeare alone was contained everything that could ever happen to anybody. I went up to read English at Cambridge in 1983.
I met my husband at Cambridge; he was studying French and Russian at King’s but mostly being in a student rock band whose high point was supporting New Order. This was big stuff in the early Eighties, let me tell you! When I left to go and live in London, he went off to Cannes to do his teaching year off (he had the choice between the Riviera and Vladivostock; a tough one, as you can imagine). I used to save up all my money from my first job, at an art magazine called Apollo, and fly out there to see him; thus began a love of the South of France that has lasted ever since. We still go at least once a year, and our small children are showing every sign of growing to love it just as much.
From Apollo I went, in 1987, to a house magazine for foreign diplomats based in London. It was called, not surprisingly, Diplomat, and over the course of five years I rose from being editorial assistant to editor. We were a tiny team and I hard to do everything from subbing (writing headlines and checking facts) to designing front covers, but it was good training. I was also able to indulge my fascination with glamour by being regularly invited into the palatial homes of the various ambassadors; stuffed with servants, paintings and long shining dining tables that regularly hosted fabulous dinners for fifty or more, some of which I was even asked to. There were parties almost every night; the gins and tonics were staggeringly (and I mean staggeringly) strong.
From Diplomat I went in 1993 to Harpers & Queen, where I was the chief sub-editor for a couple of years, running a desk of four. From here to the Sunday Telegraph Magazine in Canary Wharf in 1995, which I chiefly remember because of the awful Docklands Light Railway, which apparently is much more reliable now. From here I got what was probably my biggest career break, a job as deputy editor of the Sunday Times Style section, where I hit the ground running in terms of editing and commissioning and had to learn to think on my feet, and fast. Best of all, I was given the opportunity to write on a weekly basis the column ostensibly penned by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. She was supposed to write it, but it was much easier if I did after having chatted to her. Our partnership became the inspiration for my first novel, Simply Divine, in which a lowly hack writes the column for a celebrity socialite.
Brilliant experience though it was, working the long hours at the Sunday Times (we’d be regularly at the office until two or three am on press days) as well as writing a novel was too much, however, and in 1998 (or thereabouts) I moved to become deputy editor of the glossy magazine Tatler; a source of more hilarious upmarket material than even Tara had been. I am forever grateful to them and look back on my days there with immense fondness. Simply Divine was published in 1999, and at the same time I moved to the Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine, a haven of sanity and nice people, which is where I was working when I got my second book contract and was able, finally, to become a writer full-time. Which is what I have been ever since, producing, on average, a book a year. Beautiful People, just out in paperback, is my latest.
Along the way I got married (in 1993) and had two children, Andrew (born 2002) and Isabella (born 2004). As you can see, we were in no hurry to be parents, but now we are we adore it. Around the time of Andrew’s first birthday I gave up the struggle to commute from London to the country every weekend and moved full-time to Derbyshire, where we live in a former Victorian gardener’s lodge built in the shape of a tiny castle. Just the place for a spinner of romantic yarns! I work in a small green hut in the garden where in winter the water freezes in my Evian bottle, but where I get wonderful views over the valley all year long.
To find out more about Wendy Holden visit www.wendyholden.net.