Liz Hodgkinson

Hodgkinson was born Elizabeth Garrett,[3] and grew up, in the small Cambridgeshire town of St Neots.[4]

She attended Huntingdon Grammar School, which was co-educational and which is now named Hinchingbrooke School.[4][5] At the school, she became a close friend of Amaryllis Garnett and was influenced by the bohemian household of David and Angelica Garnett. She has written that her parents would have been happy enough for her to leave school at 16 and train as a secretary. "They had no idea of higher education or careers." However, she wanted more from a career, so she attended Durham University where she studied English.[6] Hodgkinson has written that her period at university was dominated by an obsession she developed for a male student, which began at first sight and was to overshadow her subsequent relationships.[7]

After a short stint teaching, Hodgkinson became a freelance reporter and columnist. At first, in the years 1966–1970, she worked in Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England, on the Thomson Newspapers the Evening Chronicle, the Newcastle Journal, and the Sunday Sun.

During these years she married Neville Hodgkinson, also a journalist, who would also become a Daily Mail science and medical columnist and author of books. The couple's sons, Tom and Will, have both became journalists and authors like their parents.

The family moved to London, to a house in Richmond, and (like her husband) Hodgkinson gained a series of jobs in Fleet Street. In 1971–1972, Hodgkinson was Deputy Editor of the mother and baby magazine Modern Mother (long since closed), and then in 1972–1973 she worked as a columnist on the London Evening News.[1] She then worked on four national newspapers: the Sunday People, The Sun, the Daily Mail, and The Times, where she was Women's Editor for a period during 1986. After that, in 1986 she became a freelance journalist, writing for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and the London Evening Standard, and again for the Daily Mail.[1]

Using her experience as a journalist, Hodgkinson taught beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes in journalism at City Literary Institute for 10 years (1995–2005). One of her books, Ladies of the Street, was about the women who transformed journalism in Britain, from the heart of London in Fleet Street, from the late 19th century to the present day.

Hodgkinson's books are mostly devoted to four main subject areas, over time: first health; then lifestyle, including topics around religion and special ways of life (influenced by her by then ex-husband Neville's involvement with Indian religion); then biography, particularly of some individuals with changing sexuality; and latterly, as a complete change, real estate and property matters.

She continues to contribute to publications and websites, including the Daily Mail’s Femail pages, The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines House Beautiful, The Lady, and Woman.[1]

In the 1981, Hodgkinson's husband Neville became involved with the Brahma Kumaris religious movement. Seven years later, when their sons had reached adulthood, the couple amicably separated. Neville wrote that he deeply loved his wife but his spiritual journey affected the relationship.[8] He moved to the Brahma Kumaris retreat centre at Nuneham House, Oxfordshire.

In the late 1980s, possibly as part of this personal crisis, although theirs was an amicable divorce,[4] she began to think about the subject of how people can deal with such situations, and published a book on celibacy as a solution to personal problems. She followed that with Bodyshock, a journalism book on transsexuality.

After her divorce, she again suffered obsessive thoughts about a male student from her university days. She sought psychotherapy and wrote a book on the experience: "I believe that with obsessive love, time is no healer at all. The experience of obsessive love can be likened to dropping a stitch in knitting, and never picking it up. The knitting never quite looks right from then on, unless we unpick it and start again from the mistake."[7] She became friends with journalist John Sandilands, then saw him as her partner; and for many years they shared a holiday flat in Worthing, West Sussex; but she has lived alone since his death in 2004.[4] She has (as of late 2016) between them given her five grandchildren.[4]

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Guild of Health Writers and the National Landlords’ Association.

• Liz Hodgkinson website