Lucy Wadham

Lucy Wadham was born in London and educated at Oxford University before moving to Paris in 1989 to work as a news assistant at the BBC Paris bureau. She later became a freelance researcher for television documentaries relating mainly to crime and terrorism in France and now works as a freelance journalist writing regularly for numerous other including The Independent, The Spectator and The New Statesman.

Her first novel, LOST, a thriller set on Corsica, was published by Faber & Faber in 2000 to great acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Macallan Gold Dagger Award and optioned by John Malkovich's production company, Mr Mudd. This was followed in 2003 by CASTRO'S DREAM, set in the Basque Country against the backdrop of the Basque terrorist movement, ETA. Lucy's third novel, GREATER LOVE, was published by Faber in 2007.

At the age of 19 Wadham ran away from English boys - who she found emotionally immature and sexually unconfident- and into the arms of a Frenchman. She soon discovered that romantic relationships in France were fraught with their own set of problems: not only do the French put women on a pedestal, but both sexes are required to act out the sort of seduction games that disappeared from English society centuries ago. Wadham, who dressed in Doc Martens and baggy jumpers, struggled to fit in...Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic church, put her children through the French education system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham examines the profound and varied differences between the Anglo Saxon and French world-views. Using her own experience, as a wife and mother, and later as an investigative journalist for the BBC, Wadham explores French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war, and race and in so doing reveals much about our own priorities and the nature of our identity. "The Secret Life of France" challenges our preconceptions about France and debunks many of the myths - bleak and rosy - on which our view of France rests, and asks whether we might have something to learn from this most infuriating and contrary neighbour?