Deborah Moggach

Deborah Moggach

Deborah Moggach (born Deborah Hough; 28 June 1948) is an English writer. She has written seventeen novels including The Ex-Wives, Tulip Fever, These Foolish Things and Heartbreak Hotel. She has adapted many of her novels as TV dramas and has also written several film scripts, including the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for Pride & Prejudice.^[1] These Foolish Things was made into the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.^[2] She has also written two collections of short stories and a stage play. In February 2005, Moggach was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by her Alma Mater, the University of Bristol. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former Chair of the Society of Authors, and is on the executive committee of PEN.

Life and career

Moggach is one of four daughters of writers Charlotte and Richard Hough. She has two adult children: Tom, a teacher, and Lottie, a journalist. Moggach was brought up in Hertfordshire and London, and was educated at Camden School for Girls and Queen's College, London. She has lived in Pakistan and the United States. She graduated from the University of Bristol in 1971 with a degree in English and trained as a teacher before going to work at Oxford University Press, where she met her husband Tony, from whom she is now divorced.

For ten years, her partner was the cartoonist Mel Calman.^[3] After his death in 1994, she lived for seven years with Hungarian painter Csaba Pasztor. She currently lives in a house overlooking Hampstead Heath in North London.

In 1985 her mother was sent to prison for helping a terminally ill friend kill herself.^[4] Moggach is a patron of Dignity in Dying and campaigns for a change in the law on assisted suicide.^[5]

Works

Novels

• You Must Be Sisters (1978)
• Close to Home (1979)
• A Quiet Drink (1980)
• Hot Water Man (1982)
• Porky (1983)
• To Have and to Hold (1986)
• Driving in the Dark (1988)
• Stolen (1990)
• The Stand-In (1991)
• The Ex-Wives (1993)
• Seesaw (1996)
• Close Relations (1997)
• Tulip Fever (1999)
• Final Demand (2001)
• These Foolish Things (2004) (has been adapted into a movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
  • Also available as a "movie tie-in" book, with the same title as the movie.
• In the Dark (2007)
• Heartbreak Hotel (2013)

Short story collections

• Smile and Other Stories (1987)
• Changing Babies and Other Stories (1995)

Screenplays

• Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Teleplays

• To Have and to Hold (mini-series) (1986)
• Goggle Eyes (adaptation of an Anne Fine novel) (1993) (Won a Writers' Guild Award for Best Adapted TV Serial)
• Seesaw (adaptation of her own novel) (1998)
• Close Relations (adaptation of her own novel) (1999)
• Love in a Cold Climate (adaptation of two Nancy Mitford novels) (2001)
• Final Demand (adaptation of her own novel) (2003)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (2008)
• Stolen (adapted from her own novel) (1991)

Stage play

• Double-Take

References

External links

• Deborah Moggach at the Internet Movie Database
• Author's website
• From Hampstead to Hollywood
• University of Bristol announcement about Moggach's receipt of honorary degree