Daisy Goodwin

Daisy Goodwin read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, then studied at Columbia's film school, and gave roughly twenty-five years to British television, founding the production company Silver River in 2005 and later selling it to Sony. Along the way she edited poetry anthologies, among them 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, and chaired the judges of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her first novel appeared in Britain as My Last Duchess and in America as The American Heiress: Cora Cash, heiress to a Gilded Age fortune, is steered by her mother towards a titled English husband, becomes Duchess of Wareham, and learns that money buys her neither candour nor welcome. The Fortune Hunter builds on three real figures, the cavalry officer and celebrated rider Bay Middleton, the quietly wealthy Charlotte Baird, and Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, who came to England in 1875 for the hunting season. Goodwin created the ITV and PBS series Victoria, published a novel of that name in 2016, and in 2024 wrote Diva, drawn from the life of Maria Callas.