Background

Nicci Gerrard was born on June 10, 1958, in Stourbridge, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of John and Patricia Gerrard. She grew up in Worcestershire, together with her two sisters and her brother.

Education

Nicci Gerrard was educated at The Alice Ottley School in Worcester. He studied English Literature at Oxford University and graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She also received a Master of Philosophy degree at Sheffield University in 1986.

Career

After graduating from Oxford University, Nicci Gerard began her first job, working with emotionally disturbed children in Sheffield. She taught literature in Los Angeles and London. She founded a women's magazine before becoming a freelance journalist.

For many years she was on the staff of The Observer – as a literary editor, then a feature writer and executive editor. She covered the trials of Rosemary West, Harold Shipman, and Ian Huntley. She also wrote numerous articles on the disadvantaged and under-represented people of Britain, such as prostitutes and children in care.

Following the failure of her first marriage, she met Sean French whilst working as an editor for the New Statesman where French wrote a weekly column but left when she was offered another job at The Observer. Nicci co-writes novels with her husband Sean and together they use the pen name "Nicci French". Nicci Gerrard & Sean French also write separately.

After her father’s slow death from dementia in 2014, Nicci Gerrard set out to explore the illness that now touches millions of people around the world. She co-founded John's Campaign which seeks to take care of those who are vulnerable and powerless. The Campaign is a national movement in the United Kingdom now. In her book, What Dementia Teaches Us About Love, she speaks to those affected by the disease: from people living with dementia and families trying to make sense of the changes to their loved ones, to the scientists unlocking the mysteries of the brain and therapists using art and music to enrich the lives of sufferers.

Gerard still works as a journalist for the Observer, covering high-profile trials. In 2019 she published her new book The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting.

Achievements

• In 2016 Nicci Gerrard won the Orwell Prize for Journalism, for a piece exploring dementia. Her books were translated into various languages.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Twilight Hour

    (Eleanor Lee has lived a fiercely independent existence fo...)

    2014
  • The Winter House

    (When Marnie receives a phone call that summons her to the...)

    2009
  • What Dementia Teaches Us About Love

    (After her own father's death from dementia, the writer an...)

    2017
  • The Moment You Were Gone

    (Gaby and Connor seem to have a loving marriage - one that...)

    2007
  • The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting

    (After a diagnosis of dementia, Nicci Gerrard's father, Jo...)

    2019
  • Solace

    (Irene has a husband, Adrian, three small children and - t...)

    2005
  • Things We Knew Were True

    (Things We Knew Were True is the first novel written by Ni...)

    2003
  • Soham: A Story of Our Times

    (One damp evening in August, two little girls went missing...)

    2004
  • Missing Persons

    (When Jonny went missing everything changed. His mother's ...)

    2011

Views

Quotations: "I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in goodness, community, common purposes, care, rationality, creativity, the importance of friends and of the kindness of strangers."

"I’ve spent my life encountering Orwell, or maybe I mean Orwells because the more I’ve read and thought about him, the stranger and more complicated he becomes."

"Two of the things we most love about living in Suffolk are visiting its beautiful churches, unmatched almost anywhere, and cycling along its country lanes."

"The terror of losing memories is the terror of losing the active self."

Connections

In 1981 Nicci Gerrard married Colin Hughes. The marriage produced two children, Edgar and Anna. Then they divorced. In October 1990 she married Sean French. They have two children, Hadley and Molly.

Father:

John Gerrard

John Gerrard died in 2014 after living 10 years with dementia.

Mother:

Patricia Gerrard

Ex-husband:

Colin Hughes

husband:

Sean French

Sean French was born on 28 May 1959 in Bristol. While at Oxford University, French won a young writers contest organized by Vogue, and subsequently became a journalist. In 1987 he gained his first column and until the end of 2000, he wrote a column for the New Statesman. His solo novel Start from Here was published in 2004.

Son:

Edgar

Daughter:

Anna

Daughter:

Hadley

Daughter:

Molly