Elizabeth Buchan began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books after graduating from the University of Kent with a double degree in English and History. She moved on to become a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her first novel, Daughters of the Storm was set in the French Revolution, her second, Light of the Moon in the Second World War. Later novels include the prizewinning Consider the Lily – reviewed in the Independent as ‘a gorgeously well written tale: funny, sad and sophisticated’. A subsequent novel, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman was an international bestseller and was made into a CBS Primetime Drama. This was followed by several other novels, including Daughters and I Can’t Begin to Tell You, a story of the SOE operating in Denmark during the Second World War. Subsequent novels include: The New Mrs Clifton, The Museum of Broken Promises and Two Women in Rome. Her latest, Bonjour, Sophie, will be published in April 2024.
Elizabeth Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail. She has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes, and also been a judge for the Whitbread awards and the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of The Clapham Book Festival.