10 Things I Want My Readers To Know About Me By Wendy Holden

I believe that humour is important. Being cheerful isn’t an indulgence, it’s a moral position. Anyone can be miserable, but smiling when you don’t want to takes effort. Making people laugh is much harder than making them cry, especially in books.

I think that the class system is simultaneously the most serious and the most comic of British subjects. I love to write about posh types behaving outrageously. When Jilly Cooper said my new book was ‘effing marvellous’ I died and went to heaven. I think she is a genius,

I used to work on glossy magazines, which gave me loads of material for my books. One of my jobs, on the Sunday Times Style section, involved ghost-writing a column for Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. She became very famous on the back of it and no-one realised it was me who was writing it. That became the plot for my first novel, Simply Divine,

I have the most wonderful office in the world. It’s a shed in the garden but has been extended over the years and now has an extra wing and a deck out the front. It’s the Versailles of garden huts and has rugs, fairy lights and standard lamps. It was boho chic before the term was ever invented.

One of my favourite feelings is sitting down at a table in a wonderful restaurant with the whole lunch stretching before you. One of the feelings I hate most is getting in a bath with too much cold water and no prospect of more hot until the tank heats up.

I love travelling, but always go to the same places. I love old-school glamour - the South of France, Rome, Paris and Venice. I have visited them all many times but regret to say that my French and Italian remain as rubbish as ever.

I love music and listen to everything from punk to Prokofiev. I have been learning the piano for the last few years. I’ve also taken up fencing, and prance about every Tuesday night in tight white breeches waving a sword. As Oscar Wilde said, one should always be a little improbable.

Celebrities fascinate me. They lead lives of high comedy, all the more so because they are trying to make it look so cool and glamorous. I imagine all the things that must go wrong behind the scenes, and weave them into my books.

If I wasn’t a writer, I would be a historian. Before I discovered English literature, history was always my favourite subject. I love poking around National Trust houses and exploring their wonderful grounds. Beauty is as important for the soul as comedy.