Nina Stibbe (born 1962) is a British writer born in Willoughby Waterleys and raised in Fleckney, Leicestershire. She became a nanny in the household of Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books . Her letters home to her sister became her first book, Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life, which was adapted into the 2016 BBC television series, Love, Nina .
Born in 1962, Nina Stibbe grew up in rural Leicestershire, England, in a single-parent family. [1] [2] [3] In 1982, she left Leicestershire to work as the nanny in the household of Mary-Kay Wilmers for two years, at 55 Gloucester Crescent, London, looking after Mary-Kay's two children with Stephen Frears, Sam and Will. [4] At the time Gloucester Crescent was the home of a number of notable artistic and literary figures, including Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, Claire Tomalin, Karel Reisz, Deborah Moggach and Michael Frayn. [5] This literary environment was completely new to her. During this time, Nina wrote letters to her sister Victoria, back in Leicestershire, detailing her experiences as a nanny amongst the literary elite. [5] These letters became the basis for Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life (2013), which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year and won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2014 National Book Awards. [4] [6]
After leaving the Wilmers household, Stibbe studied Humanities at Thames Polytechnic. In 1990 she started work as a marketing assistant at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, then as a rep for the Open University Press, and finally for Routledge, becoming a commissioning editor. [7] [8] In 2002 she moved to Cornwall with her partner, Mark Nunney, whom she met while living on Gloucester Crescent, and their children. [7] [1]
In 2014, she published her first semi-autobiographical novel, Man at the Helm. [5] Stibbe had been attempting to write the novel for more than 30 years, having struggled to find her voice. [5]
In 2016, Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life was adapted by Nick Hornby for the BBC, as Love, Nina , starring Faye Marsay in the title role and Helena Bonham Carter. [9]
Reasons to Be Cheerful won the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, [10] making Stibbe the fourth woman to win the prize. [11] Man at the Helm had been shortlisted in 2015 and Paradise Lodge had been on the 2017 shortlist. [12] Two rare breed pigs were named Reasons and Cheerful after the novel's title. [12]
In 2020, Stibbe was awarded the Comedy Women in Print Prize for Reasons to Be Cheerful, winning £3,000. [11]
Jonathan Coe is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! (1994) reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources that was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments of the 1980s.
Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s.
Helen Fielding is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s Independent newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels and three movies, with a fourth movie announced in April 2024 for release in 2025.
Right Ho, Jeeves is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, the second full-length novel featuring the popular characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, after Thank You, Jeeves. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 5 October 1934 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 15 October 1934 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, under the title Brinkley Manor. It had also been sold to the Saturday Evening Post, in which it appeared in serial form from 23 December 1933 to 27 January 1934, and in England in the Grand Magazine from April to September 1934. Wodehouse had already started planning this sequel while working on Thank You, Jeeves.
Mary-Kay Wilmers, Hon. FRSL is an American editor and journalist. She was the editor of the London Review of Books from 1992 to 2021, and she remains consulting editor. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.
Howard Eric Jacobson is a British novelist and journalist. He writes comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. He is a Man Booker Prize winner.
Helen Margaret Lederer is a British comedian, writer and actress who emerged as part of the alternative comedy boom at the beginning of the 1980s. Among her television credits are the BBC2 sketch series Naked Video and BBC One's Absolutely Fabulous, in which she played the role of Catriona.
Bachelors Anonymous is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1973 by Barrie & Jenkins, London and in the United States on 28 August 1974 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.
The Robert Smyth Academy is a secondary school in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England, for 11- to 18-year-olds. It is situated in the north of the town, on Burnmill Road, close to St Luke's Hospital.
Amelia Mary Bullmore is an English actress, screenwriter and playwright. She is known for her roles in Coronation Street, I'm Alan Partridge (2002), Ashes to Ashes (2008–2009), Twenty Twelve (2011–2012) and Scott & Bailey (2011–2014). Bullmore began writing in 1994. Her writing credits include episodes of This Life, Attachments, Black Cab, and Scott & Bailey.
Marina Lewycka is a British novelist of Ukrainian origin.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a humorous novel by Marina Lewycka, first published in 2005 by Viking.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom's first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011, and 2020 saw a graphic novel take the prize for the first time.
Paul Torday was a British writer and the author of the comic novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. The book was the winner of the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and was serialised on BBC Radio 4. It won the Waverton Good Read Award in 2008. It was made into feature film in 2011, starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.
Sarah Bartlett Churchwell is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century American literature and cultural history, especially the 1920s and 1930s. She has appeared on British television and radio and has been a judge for the Booker Prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. She is the director of the Being Human festival and the author of three books: The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe; Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby; and Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream. In April 2021, she was long listed for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
Dame Hannah Mary Rothschild is a British author, businesswoman, philanthropist and documentary filmmaker. In addition to screenplays and journalism, she has published a biography and three novels. She sits on charitable and financial boards. In August 2015, she became the first woman to chair the board of trustees of the National Gallery in London.
Love, Nina is a 2016 British comedy drama starring Faye Marsay and Helena Bonham Carter. Adapted by Nick Hornby from Nina Stibbe's book, Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life, the series received its debut on BBC One on 20 May 2016 and ran for five episodes. Set in 1982, the series tells the story of Nina (Marsay), a 20-year-old girl from Leicester who moves to Primrose Hill, London, to work as a nanny for single mother George.
Gloucester Crescent is an 1840s Victorian residential crescent in Camden Town in London which from the early 1960s gained a bohemian reputation as “the trendiest street in London” and "Britain's cleverest street" when it became home for many British writers, artists and intellectuals including Jonathan Miller, George Melly, Alan Bennett and Alice Thomas Ellis.
The Comedy Women in Print Prize is a literary award for comedy novels written by women. It was founded in 2018 by Helen Lederer in response to the low number of women awarded the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, having only been presented to three women in 18 years. However, Lederer has been careful not to describe the prize in critical terms. She also acknowledges that her status as a well-known comedian has helped draw focus onto the award.
Sophie McCartney is an English comedian and novelist who has written and performed about her experiences of motherhood.
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