Meredith Whitford

Meredith Whitford lives in Adelaide, South Australia. She has a husband, two adult children, two grandchildren, and usually two cats.

Educated entirely after leaving school, she finally went to university as a mature-age student. She has a BA in History, English and Classics from the University of Adelaide, and in 2011 completed a Master of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) degree at Flinders University, Adelaide. Her Masters thesis was a novella, "What Became of Winifred Wimsey?", using characters from the crime novels of Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham. In 2012 she began a PhD on Margery Allingham.

She has been Director of Between Us Manuscript Assessment Service (www.betweenusmanuscripts.com) since 1998.

After being rejected by several publishers on the grounds that "No one is interested in books about Richard III," her first novel, "Treason", published by indie Bewrite Books, won the 2002 international Eppie Award for historical fiction and has received excellent reviews. Its sales have increased since the recent (2012) discovery of the remains of King Richard III in Leicester; 30,000 downloads in six months alone. A new paperback edition of "Treason" has just been released by VIVID/Fontaine Publishing. Her second novel, "Shakespeare's Will", was released in 2010. (This is now published as an e-book under the title "Love's Will" by Endeavour Press. A new paperback version will be released soon.) With its strong female lead character in Anne Shakespeare,its description of a love affair between Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, and its witty Shakespearean references, "Shakespeare's Will" has attracted a wide readership and a lot of good reviews. Meredith has also just published "Churchill's Rebels", a biography of Jessica Mitford and her first husband, Esmond Romilly, nephew of Sir Winston Churchill. This is available in e-book, with a paperback to be released very soon.

When she is not writing or reading (and she usually is) her hobbies are cryptic crosswords, being pedantic, and sleeping.

She suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME). On the up side, she has the great good luck to be a synaesthete.

She can be contacted at meredithwh@yahoo.com