About Annie

Annie’s early years were spent in Wallingford, a small town in the Thames Valley, living over her father’s antique shop. It was a stimulating place to live because a whole range of people worked there and the shop was ever changing, like scenery in a theatre. In the school holidays she often helped out, polishing brass hunting horns, coal scuttles and silver sugar sifters – and she was fascinated, years later, to see how those were made, in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. 

As the youngest child of older parents she grew up without siblings at home – perhaps the reason she decided to make up a younger brother… She always loved reading and started writing very young. She wrote her first ‘novel,’ aged seven, on her father’s office typewriter.

Annie’s mother was from the Midlands, born in Kenilworth. She worked for the Standard Motor Company in Coventry through World War Two including the Coventry blitz and for some time after, as the firm tooled up for contracts from Massey Ferguson.

Annie’s father was in the army in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War. In the years afterwards he had itchy feet, so the family used to travel with a caravan back to many of the places he had been to – to Morocco, Spain, but above all, Italy which he loved.

After University Annie trained as a journalist and her first job was in ‘comms’ for a charity based in Moat Lane in the centre of Birmingham. She loved living in the city right away and felt very at home. With her first wage packet she bought an electric typewriter – with a correction ribbon which seemed very advanced! And she soon joined writers workshops at Cannon Hill and then Tindal Street Fiction Group.

When her job contract came to an end, Annie began training as a nurse at Selly Oak Hospital – only to get married and have twins, then two more children. 

After deciding that she couldn’t manage writing, nursing and children all at once, Annie stayed at home and started researching the city around her. This soon led to her writing her first Birmingham novel, Birmingham Rose, which was published in 1995 and shot on to the bestseller lists.  Some of her subsequent titles have been top ten Sunday Times bestsellers. She has now written more than 30 books.