Maggie Brookes is an ex-journalist and BBC TV producer turned novelist and poet. She relishes uncovering stories about the strength of women and the power of friendship and love in the most terrible of circumstances.

Her novel The Prisoner’s Wife, based on an extraordinary true story of WW2, was published  by  Penguin Random House and around the world in 2020.  It tells the story of a young Czech woman who disguised herself as a British prisoner of war in order to be with the man she loved.

Acts of Love and War, published in 2022, is a heartrending tale of love, courage and sacrifice, again based on true events. Lucy follows the men she loves into the horrors of the Spanish civil war, and ends up saving the lives of thousands of children.

Maggie made historical documentaries for BBC TV and has published seven collections of poetry as Maggie Butt, including the historical collection Ally Pally Prison Camp (Oversteps Books 2011). Wish, her new and collected poems, was published in 2025 under the name Maggie Brookes-Butt.

As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and she loves to swim in the sea.