Shirley Conran

Born in 1932,[1] she attended St. Paul's Girls' School, London,[2] and then a finishing school in Switzerland, which later provided some inspiration for the fictional school ''L'Hirondelle' in her 1982 novel Lace.[3] Her father was an alcoholic and her home life was difficult,[4] causing Conran to leave home at 19.[5] She worked as an artist's model, and then trained as a sculptor at Southern College of Art, Portsmouth (now part of Southampton University),[6] and as a painter at Chelsea Polytechnic (now part of University of the Arts London).[2]

Following the breakdown of her first marriage, Conran turned to writing in order to support her children.[7] She wrote for the Daily Mail and in 1968 became women's editor and launched Femail, the newspaper's first dedicated women's section.[2] Writing in the Mail in 2018, Conran reflected that this was the first time women in British journalism were being allowed free rein to write about what interests them, given "newspapers had only ever included a woman's section about knitting, dress patterns, recipes and the odd interview with worthy charity organisers." For its pioneering work, Conran believes the first edition of "Femail" magazine should be in the Feminist Archives.[8]

Conran later became women's editor for The Observer magazine, and wrote columns for Vanity Fair.[7] Her influential[9] 1975 non-fiction book Superwoman coined the phrase that became a feminist slogan: "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom."[5]

Her first novel Lace was published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster[10] and was a huge bestseller, spending 13 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching as high as No. 6.[11] It became known as a 'bonkbuster' for its many explicit and often bizarre sex scenes.[4] It was adapted into a 1980s US miniseries[12] starring Phoebe Cates.[13] It contains the infamous line: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"[12]

Conran was married to Sir Terence Conran from 1955 to 1962; they are the parents of two sons: Sebastian Orby Conran and Jasper Alexander Thirlby Conran, both designers.[4] In 2009, she wrote that she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.[14] Conran has homes in France and London, and lived in Monaco for several years.[15] She founded the educational non-profit Maths Action.[16]

• Official website
• Sarah Hughes: 'What trashy novels taught me about life', Observer Books, 31 January 2021