Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant (born 8 August 1950) is a British novelist, journalist, broadcaster, and critic. She is married with two daughters, and lives in London and Florence.

Early life

Dunant was born in 1950 and raised in London. She is the daughter of David Dunant, a former Welsh airline steward who later became a manager at British Airways, and his French wife Estelle, who grew up in Bangalore, India.

She went to Godolphin and Latymer, a local girls' grammar school. She then studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was involved in the amateur theatrical club Footlights. After she graduated, she earned an actor's equity card and moved to Tokyo, Japan. In Tokyo, she worked as an English teacher and nightclub hostess for six months, before returning home through Southeast Asia.

Broadcasting career

She worked at BBC Radio 4 for two years in London, producing its then arts magazine programme ''Kaleidoscope'', before travelling again, this time overland through North, Central and South America, a trip that became research material for her first solo novel ''Snow Storms in a Hot Climate'' (1988), a thriller about the early cocaine trade in Colombia.

She went on to work extensively in radio and television, most notably as a presenter of BBC2's late-night live arts programme '' The Late Show'' in the 1990s and '' Night Waves'', BBC Radio 3's nightly cultural discussion programme.

She contributes regularly to radio, and is an occasional presenter for BBC Radio 4's opinion slot ''A Point of View''.

Writing

Dunant started writing in her late twenties, first with a friend, with whom she produced two political thrillers and a five-part BBC1 drama series – ''Thin Air'', starring Kate Hardie, Nicky Henson and Clive Merrison, broadcast in 1988 – before going solo.

Her eleven subsequent novels have explored two genres: contemporary thrillers and historical fiction. What unites the two is her decision to use avowedly popular forms, characterised by compelling storytelling, as a way to explore serious subject matter and reach large audiences. This has included (though not exclusively) a passionate commitment to feminism and the role of women inside history.

In the 1990s, she wrote a trilogy around a British female private eye called Hannah Wolfe, spotlighting issues such as surrogacy, cosmetic surgery, animal rights, and violence to women. Sexual violence was also at the centre of ''Transgressions'' (based on a mysterious series of incidents happening in her house, which tackled what might happen if a woman woke to an intruder in her house and lived to tell the tale. The resulting furore over the actions of the heroine "caused the book to become a cause celebre which triggered a debate about rape and popular culture".

In 2000, an extended visit to Florence, Italy, changed Dunant's working life. In what she acknowledged was something of a midlife crisis, her old passion for history was reignited, and she started to research the impact of the Renaissance on the city in the 1490s. The result was ''The Birth of Venus'', the first of a trilogy of novels about women's lives in the Italian Renaissance. The commercial success of these books in America and elsewhere allowed Dunant to devote herself full-time to writing and research, concentrating on the most current work being done in Renaissance studies, most particularly concerning the lives of women. The novel ''Sacred Hearts'', a story of nuns in an enclosed convent in 16th-century Ferrara, led to collaboration with the early music group Musica Secreta: a theatrical adaptation using the music of the period and with a choir, performed in churches and at early music festivals around Britain.

Since then, she has been working on the history of the Borgia family, seeking to separate the colourful historical truth from the smear and gossip that built up during their lives, and in history after their deaths. It has made her an advocate for better historical accuracy in popular television series such as ''The Borgias''.<.

Her most recent book "The Marchesa" centres on the extrodinary life of Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua and the first female art collector and patron of the italian renaissaance. She left behing her an astonishing archive of 33,000 letters of correspondence, from which her voice, charming, cunning , clever and ruthless by degrees sings out. She rubbed shoulders with Popes, kings and bankers, artists like Leonardo, Mantegna, and Titian was a fabulous diplomat running the state while her husband was away fighting, and (in her spare time!) was an icon of fashion and style. A contraversial figure even in her own time ":1
[https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15830.Sarah_Dunant/blog Sarah Dunant's Blog">Sarah Dunant's Blog website: www sarahdunant.com)

As a journalist, Dunant has reviewed for many UK newspapers, as well as for ''The New York Times'', and edited two books of essays on political correctness (''The War of the Words'', 1995) and millennial anxieties (''The Age of Anxiety'', 1996, with Roy Porter). She works regularly in Radio and print.

Awards/citations

Dunant's crime novels were three times shortlisted for the CWA Golden Dagger award, and in 1994 she won a silver dagger for ''Fatlands''.Sarah Dunant's Blog
2013.

In 2010, ''Sacred Hearts'' was shortlisted for the first Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
, an award that highlighted the growing power and popularity of the form.

She is an accredited lecturer for NADFAS, the UK arts charity that promotes education and appreciation of fine arts.

In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from Oxford Brookes University, where she is a guest lecturer on the Creative writing M.A. course.

Views

In her journalism and public speaking, Dunant is a feminist, and an advocate for legalisation of marijuana. A Catholic by birth, she has also written about the importance of religion in history and the need for Catholicism to reform itself.

Bibliography

Mystery

Marla Masterson (co-written with Peter Busby as Peter Dunant)

# ''Exterminating Angels'', 1983. London: David & Charles.
# ''Intensive Care'', 1986. London: Andre Deutsch.

Hannah Wolfe

# ''Birth Marks'', 1992. New York: Doubleday.
# ''Fatlands'', 1993. New York: Penzler Books.
# ''Under My Skin'', 1995. New York: Scribner Book Co.

Standalone

* ''Snow Storms in a Hot Climate'', 1988. New York: Random House.
* ''Transgressions'', 1997. New York: HarperCollins.
* ''Mapping the Edge'', 1999. New York: Random House.

Historical novels of the Italian Renaissance

The Borgias

# ''Blood and Beauty'', 2013. London: Virago Press.
# ''In the Name of the Family'', 2017. London: Virago Press.

"The Marchesa" 2025. Whitefox, ISBN 978-1-9177523-08-0 an illustrated novel on the life, letters and times of Isabella d'ESte, Marchesa of Mantua

Standalone

* ''The Birth of Venus'', 2003. New York: Random House.
* ''In the Company of the Courtesan'', 2006. London: Virago Press.
* ''Sacred Hearts'', 2009. New York: Random House.

Non-Fiction

* ''The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate'', 1995. London: Virago Press.
* ''The Age of Anxiety'' (with Roy Porter), 1996. London: Virago Press.

Awards

* 1993: Silver Dagger Award (from Crime Writers' Association), winner, ''Fatlands''
* 2010: Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, shortlist, ''Sacred Hearts''

References

External links

*

Transcript of interview
with Ramona Koval, The Book Show, ABC Radio National, 15 April 2007
*

Sarah Dunant interview from Open2.net

Listen to an audio slideshow interview
with Sarah Dunant talking about ''Sacred Hearts'' on The Interview Online

"Sarah is a Fellow on the MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunant, Sarah
1950 births
Living people
Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge
English women novelists
English historical novelists
English thriller writers
English crime fiction writers
English people of Welsh descent
People educated at Godolphin and Latymer School
20th-century English novelists
21st-century British novelists
20th-century English women writers
21st-century English women writers
British women mystery writers
Women thriller writers
British women historical novelists