Joanna Trollope was born in Cotswold in December 1943. Joanna grew up in a small family, she was the eldest of the three. She went to school in Surrey but only really started to enjoy education when she went to university. She won a scholarshop to Oxford University and joined the Foreign Office and then moved on to become a teacher. She began writing to fill in time after her children went to bed. It was in 1980 that Joanna became a full time author and has now been writing for over thirty years. Joanna Trollope has been married twice and now lives on her own in London.