Wendy Holden (author, born 1965)

Wendy Holden (born 12 June 1965[1]) is a best-selling British novelist.[2]

Holden was born and raised in Cleckheaton, West Riding of Yorkshire.[3] She attended Whitcliffe Mount School,[4] and read English at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating from Cambridge University in the mid-1980s. Holden moved to London where she found work in the magazine business, eventually working for The Diplomat monthly, where she became an editor. From there, she moved on to The Sunday Times.[3] One of her responsibilities at the title was ghostwriting a column on behalf of socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, an experience which Holden says influenced her first novel, Simply Divine.[3]

Simply Divine was published in 1999, and Holden went on to write a series of novels, most of which were bestsellers, and which she happily describes as "chick lit" and "supermarket novels".[3] After over a decade focused on the genre, Holden turned her attention to historical fiction. Her first novel in the genre, The Governess, told the story of Marion Crawford, governess to the future Queen Elizabeth II.[5] Her subsequent novel, The Duchess, released in 2021, focused on the life of Wallis Simpson.[6]

As of 2015 Holden is married, has two children, and lives in the Derbyshire Peak District.[3]