Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope was born in her grandfather's rectory in the Cotswolds in December 1943. After a childhood spent in the Midlands and Surrey, she went to Oxford on a scholarship, she went on to a spell in the Foreign Office and then became a teacher.

She began writing 'to fill the long spaces after the children had gone to bed' and for many years combined her writing career with working as a teacher. It was in 1980 that Joanna became a full-time author but has said: “My first novel was written when I was 14, all about myself, of course (it is now kept under lock and key in case my children find it...) I suppose I wrote it for the same reason that I still write - to communicate. I don't think we should ever underestimate the power of story - story is how we negotiate with each other, how we build up relationships, how we learn. And nothing is so fascinating as good narrative - nobody of any age can resist What Happens Next ...”

Joanna Trollope has been writing for over thirty years: she first wrote a number of historical novels now published under Caroline Harvey, then Britannia’s Daughters - a study of women in the British Empire and more recently, her enormously successful contemporary works of fiction, several of which have been televised. The Choir was her first contemporary novel, followed by A Village Affair and A Passionate Man. The Rector's Wife was her first number one bestseller, and made her into a household name. Since then she has written five more contemporary novels: The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People’s Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South and Brother and Sister. All of these have attracted considerable critical acclaim as well as commercial success.

Joanna was appointed the OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature. Her new novel, Friday Nights, is out now.

Friday Nights

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From the window of her Fulham house she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely - and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then Paula, a single mother, meets a man - an enigmatic significant man called Jackson - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break.

With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship. She also looks at the changing demands on modern women and men as traditional roles are tested. One couple, Lucas and Karen, are going through problems as Karen struggles with being the main bread-winner with her own growing business and two daughters and a husband to look after, while Lucas a struggling artist, feels relegated to the bottom of the pile, blocked from painting.  She also looks at the different ways of finding fulfilment for modern women with Eleanor and Blaise both choosing to find happiness through their careers.   The notion of family is explored with a suggestion of a much less conventional modern family encompassing friends.