Julia Jones, formerly also known as Julia Thorogood, is an English writer, editor, book publisher and patient advocate.
Early life
Julia Jones was born in
Woodbridge, Suffolk
Woodbridge is a port town and civil parish in the East Suffolk District, East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It is up the River Deben from the sea. It lies north-east of Ipswich and around north-east of London. In 2011 it had a populat ...
in 1954.
[biography page]
on Julia Jones' personal website, golden-duck.co.uk, viewed 8 July 2011 When she was three years old, her father George Jones bought the wooden sailing
ketch
A ketch is a two- masted sailboat whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast), and whose mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder post. The mizzen mast stepped forward of the rudder post is what distinguishes the ketch f ...
''Peter Duck'', a yacht originally commissioned and owned by children's novelist
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...
and named for a character in
one of his novels.
[Setting sail on Arthur Ransome's boat](_blank)
on ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'' website, viewed 13 October 2012 This nautical connection with Ransome, along with numerous
pony book
A pony is a type of small horse, usually measured under a specified height at maturity. Ponies often have thicker coats, manes and tails, compared to larger horses, and proportionally shorter legs, wider barrels, heavier , thicker necks and s ...
s, helped to shape a lifelong enthusiasm for books.
Writer and publisher
Jones opened a bookshop in
Ingatestone
Ingatestone is a village and former civil parish in Essex, England, with a population of 5,409 inhabitants at the United Kingdom 2021 Census, 2021 Census. Just north lies the village of Fryerning; the two now forming the parish of Ingatestone ...
,
Essex
Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...
, which she then developed into a small-scale local publishing business, reissuing a Second World War autobiography by crime writer
Margery Allingham
Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English novelist from the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", and considered one of its four " Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.
All ...
.
[ Jones's interest in the Allingham family grew; she researched Margery Allingham's life and wrote a biography published in 1991. Jones has also studied the fiction writing of Margery Allingham's father, ]Herbert Allingham
Herbert John Allingham (1867–10 January 1936) was an English editor, journalist, serial pulp magazine, pulp fiction writer, husband of writer Emmie Allingham and father of crime novelist Margery Allingham.
Early life
Herbert John Allingham ...
.[
In 2006, while working on a PhD on Herbert Allingham, Jones decided to become a writer of adventure stories like the ]Swallows and Amazons series
The ''Swallows and Amazons'' series is a series of twelve children's adventure novels by English author Arthur Ransome. Set in the interwar period, the novels involve group adventures by children, mainly in the school holidays and mainly in E ...
of Arthur Ransome she had read as a child.
Dementia-care advocacy
In November 2014, Jones and co-founder Nicci Gerrard
Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard (born 10 June 1958) and Sean French (born 28 May 1959), who write psychological thrillers together.
Personal lives
Nicci Gerrard and Sean French were married in 1990. ...
set up an advocacy group, John's Campaign
John's Campaign is a campaign for extended visiting rights for family carers
A caregiver, carer or support worker is a paid or unpaid person who helps an individual with activities of daily living. Caregivers who are members of a care recipien ...
, to promote extended visiting rights for family carers
A caregiver, carer or support worker is a paid or unpaid person who helps an individual with activities of daily living. Caregivers who are members of a care recipient's family or social network, who may have specific professional training, are o ...
of patients with dementia
Dementia is a syndrome associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform activities of daily living, everyday activities. This typically invo ...
in hospitals in the United Kingdom.
Personal life
Jones has five children. She was previously married to Chris Thorogood; in 2019 she married Francis Wheen
Francis James Baird Wheen (born 22 January 1957) is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster.
Early life and education
Wheen was born into an army family Wroe, Nicholas"A life in writing" ''The Guardian'', 29 August 2009. and educated at tw ...
, a writer, journalist and broadcaster who was deputy editor of ''Private Eye
''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised ...
''.[Nicholas Wro]
"A life in writing"
''The Guardian'', 29 August 2009
Bibliography
Books by Julia Jones:
* ''Uncommon Courage: The yachtsmen volunteers of World War Two'' 1 January 2021 (shortlisted for the 2022 Maritime Foundation's Mountbatten Award for Best Book)
References
External links
Author's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Julia
1954 births
British children's writers
Living people