Sally Beauman facts for kids

Sally Vanessa Beauman (born Kinsey-Miles, 25 July 1944 – 7 July 2016) was a talented English journalist and writer. She wrote eight popular novels that were translated into many languages and sold very well.

Sally Beauman's Early Life and Career

Sally Beauman was born in Totnes, Devon, England. She went to Redland High School and later studied at Girton College, Cambridge.

She worked as a critic and editor for New York magazine for two years. Her first job there was to interview the famous writer Norman Mailer. In 1970, she won the first Catherine Pakenham Award for her journalism. When she was just 24, she became the editor of Queen magazine. She also worked as the arts editor for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine.

Sally Beauman was an investigative journalist, which means she looked deeply into stories. She also interviewed many people and wrote reviews for top newspapers and magazines in Britain and the US. These included The New Yorker. An article she wrote for The New Yorker about the author Daphne du Maurier later inspired her to write her own book, Rebecca's Tale. This book was a companion story to du Maurier's famous novel, "Rebecca".

Sally Beauman as a Writer

Sally Beauman wrote about the book Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig in The New York Times Book Review. This book was first published in France after the big changes in 1968. It became available to English readers in 1971.

Her first non-fiction book was The Royal Shakespeare Company's Centenary Production of Henry V (1976). This book looked at how the RSC staged the play Henry V in 1975. In 1982, she wrote The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades. This book told the story of the RSC from its start as a small theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1879. It was published when the Barbican Theatre opened in London.

After that, she started writing fiction. She first wrote nine romance novels for Mills & Boon using the pen name Vanessa James. Her first novel, Destiny, received a very large payment and became a best-seller around the world.

Her other popular novels include:

• Dark Angel: This story is about a country house and family that are almost ruined by an orphan child they take in.
• Rebecca's Tale: This is her companion novel to Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca."
• The Landscape of Love: This novel has many different narrators. It explores the lives of three very different sisters after the 1960s.

Her novel The Visitors (2014) is about the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. It also covers the secrets and political problems that came with the discovery.

Sally Beauman's Personal Life

Sally Beauman was first married to Christopher Beauman, an economist, from 1966 to 1971. Later, she married the actor Alan Howard. She met him in 1970 when she interviewed him for The Telegraph Magazine.

Sally and Alan had one son and two grandchildren. Alan Howard passed away in 2015. Sally Beauman died peacefully in her sleep on 7 July 2016, in a London hospital. She was 71 years old. She is buried with Alan Howard in Highgate Cemetery.

The grave of Sally Beauman and Alan Howard in Highgate Cemetery.