Author
Having worked for the BBC as a temp during my university holidays, I joined the African Service in 1981 as a production secretary. 5 years later, during which time I'd risen to producer, and gone to telly for John Craven's Newsround, I left the BBC, to work freelance. I reported for Woman's Hour, The Food Programme, PM among various Radio 4 strands and wrote for The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, Bella, City Limits and other publications. Eventually, I returned to BBC Radio on staff and, over two decades, produced series including All In The Mind, The Long View, Mind Changers and For One Night Only, as well as many documentaries. In 2005 I won a Sony Gold for Bob Marley Live At The Lyceum (presented by Paul Gambaccini). My final project was more curator than producer, as I ran The Listening Project (presented by Fi Glover) in partnership with the British Library.
I finally took voluntary redundancy in 2018, knowing it was time to tell the story I’d always wanted to tell and had attempted, in various forms, throughout my career. I attended an Arvon Foundation tutored retreat, got a dog, moved to rural Scotland, and wrote Finding Ida. The freedom to write creatively and develop fiction has been hugely enjoyable, although the discipline of all those years as a journalist and editor provided a valuable framework.
