Helen Waddell was born in Japan in 1889, the youngest of 10 children. The family moved to Ireland where she excelled at school and won a place at Queens' University Belfast. But she gave up a promising academic career to care for her step mother. At 31 she went to Oxford University where she studied for a PHD and she then moved to Paris to continue her research into 12th and 13th Century French history.
After a spell working for a publishing company in London, she published Peter Abelard which was one of the biggest selling books of the 1930s and Waddell was propelled into literary stardom. She died in London in 1965.
Kate Mosse CBE FRSL is an award-winning novelist, playwright, performer, campaigner, interviewer and non-fiction writer. The author of ten novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries.
Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, Citadel), The Joubert Family Chronicles (The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship, The Map of Bones) and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Taxidermist's Daughter and The Winter Ghosts. Her highly-acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring & Everyday Acts of Love and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, which inspired her one-woman theatre touring show.
A regular guest on radio and television for literature, Kate hosts the pre-show interview series at Chichester Festival Theatre and is a regular interviewer for literary and arts festivals including Letters Live, the Hay Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the British Library and the Royal National Theatre. Her new podcast, The Matilda Effect, will be launched in summer 2024. The Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction - the world's largest annual literary awards celebrating writing by woman - she is the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign and has her own monthly YouTube book show, Mosse on a Monday.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Kate is also an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Authors, a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and President of the Festival of Chichester. In the broader arts, Kate is President of the Festival of Chichester, Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Festival of Flowers 2024, Vice-Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Platinum Music Trust and Patron of the Chichester Festival of Music, Dance and Speech.
She is also an Ambassador for Parkinsons UK.
