Life and education

Serena Mackesy is the daughter of the Scots-born Oxford military historian Piers Mackesy

Piers Mackesy

Piers Gerald Mackesy is a British military historian who taught at the University of Oxford.-Early life and education:...

. She is also the granddaughter on her mother's side of the novelist Margaret Kennedy

Margaret Kennedy

Margaret Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright.-Family and education:Margaret Kennedy was born in Hyde Park Gate, London, the eldest of the four children of Charles Moore Kennedy , a barrister, and his wife Ellinor Edith Marwood...

 and on her father's side of Leonora Mackesy (born 1902), who wrote Harlequin romances as Leonora Starr and Dorothy Rivers. She grew up on the Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....

/Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

 borders and went to school in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, where she gained a University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 degree in English literature from Manchester College, Oxford.

Mackesy worked variously in offices, as an English teacher and on door-to-door sales before, as she told an interviewer in 2000: "I arrived at The Independent as a temp to cover for the secretary on the TV listings page... for a couple of weeks, realised I'd found somewhere I enjoyed and somehow never left.... I think the first writing I did was little potted movie previews on the weekend TV spread. The first thing anyone seemed to actually notice was a small daily bar review I used to write when the paper had a London supplement." By 1997 she was a regular columnist.

As a child Serena Mackesy was a keen rider. She has described Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

 as her favourite place in the world.

Novels

Mackesy established her reputation with the novel The Temp (1999). This went into the Sunday Times Top Ten on publication. Since then she has published Virtue (2000), Simply Heaven (2002), and Hold My Hand (2008).

Work of Mackesy's has been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, German, Japanese and Thai. Writers she admires include Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

, C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

 (Narnia series), John Donne

John Donne

John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

 and the "other" Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor (novelist)

Elizabeth Taylor was a British novelist and short story writer.-Life and writings:...

(Angel).