“ I think if you ’ re a writer it ’ s such a fantastic privilege ”
In a wooden summer house above a north Derbyshire village Wendy Holden taps out her latest work on an ageing computer . There is no internet connection and the only heat comes from an old , plug-in radiator . Not the ideal setting , you might think , for a top-selling author to write – but this is where Wendy has penned many of her best sellers .
It ’ s an incredibly busy time for the comic novelist who has had ten consecutive books in the Sunday Times Top Ten . This month her 15th book , Laura Lake and the Hipster Weddings , is published in hardback while she is also promoting the paperback version of her last novel Honeymoon Suite which hit the bookshops in January . The former national newspaper journalist interrupted her hectic schedule to chat about how the Derbyshire countryside inspires her , where she gets her work ethic from and how people would not believe her when she said she used to write a weekly column for socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson . Over tea and cake the bubbly , amiable Wendy expresses several times how fortunate she is to be writing for a living . She uses the word “ fun ” on no fewer than 11 occasions : writing is fun , promoting her books is fun and she wants to introduce a bit of fun into people ’ s lives through her work .
Laura Lake and the Hipster Weddings marks the start of a new chapter in Wendy ’ s career . After nearly 20 years she has left her publishers Headline to go with a relatively new company , Head of Zeus . “ I felt it was time for a change . The person I first went to work for at Headline is the boss at the new publisher and she was such a great inspiration to work with . So when she said ‘ would you like to come and work with us ?’ I said ‘ absolutely ’.
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“ She wants me to write comedies , which was the original brief I had at Headline , so that ’ s great . It was perfect timing .” Wendy is expecting to write seven books , one a year , in the Laura Lake series . Obviously her new publishers have exceptional faith in her . So too has her heroine Jilly Cooper who has read an advanced copy of Laura Lake and the Hipster Weddings which she describes as “ marvellous ”. The book enables Wendy to return to her earliest stamping ground as a writer – the world of glossy magazines . “ As the novel begins Laura desperately wants to be a glossy magazine journalist and she ends up getting a job as an intern , one of those jobs where you ’ re not paid . She lives in a cupboard at the office and she survives on canapés . “ Then she gets her big break , a brief to cover three society weddings . It ’ s a crazy , funny romp through the different ways you can get married these days .
“ I suppose the idea for that began partly because my new publishers wanted me to write a comedy about glossy magazines but I wanted to write about weddings . When I was doing my research for Honeymoon Suite I realised that the world of weddings had really moved on . There ’ s an awful lot of comic potential there because guests are roped into these massive productions and I just thought it was a great subject .” Wendy Holden was born on 12 June 1965 in
Cleckheaton , West Yorkshire . She always wanted to be a writer but never thought it would happen . She was the first in her family to go to university , studying English at Cambridge . She thought she might be an academic but then she landed her first job – in journalism , on a monthly magazine for foreign diplomats . “ I used to go and interview every single foreign diplomat who came to London . It was the most amazing job because I knew nothing about anything really . And so I ’ d find myself going off to interview the Israeli ambassador and I ’ d be sitting in a room with these Mossad agents and saying to the Israeli ambassador ‘ what ’ s your favourite colour ?’
“ I think if you ’ re a writer it ’ s such a fantastic privilege ”
“ I ’ m sure people thought I was a spy and it was all fantastically interesting . There were parties every single night and the gin and tonics were of an unbelievable stiffness . How anyone keeps state secrets I just don ’ t know . “ That was the beginning of a career in which I ’ ve been able to see behind the scenes of very glamorous lives , write about them and inject a comic element .” Wendy then went to work for Harpers & Queen ( later to become Harper ’ s Bazaar ), the Sunday Telegraph , the Sunday Times , Tatler and the Mail on Sunday . “ I ’ ve been very lucky and the timing ’ s always been fantastically fortunate . But I think I ’ ve also been able to spot when I can make something work .” It was while Wendy was deputy editor of the Style section of the Sunday Times that she edited a column for Tara Palmer-Tomkinson . “ I used to write this column for her every week , which was great training because I had to make it all up . “ That was the inspiration for my first book , Simply Divine . It was about a glossy magazine journalist who has to write a column for a celebrity socialite who gets all the credit .” When Wendy was at a party and was asked what she did , she said she wrote Tara Palmer- Tomkinson ’ s column . “ People said ‘ no you don ’ t , she does that ’. In those days it was thought that famous people actually wrote their own columns . “ That turned out to be a great opportunity for me . I had an epiphany and realised that it was the novel plot that I ’ d always been looking for and off I went .” She was a crucial influence in my life . Without her I don ’ t think I would have been a novelist . In so far as I ever had a muse , she was mine . I will remember her with enormous gratitude .” Wendy thought that Simply Divine might be turned into a Hollywood film when Warner