Wendy Holden's Podcast Wendy Holden

In July 2021, Wendy was invited to the postponed Ways with Words Literary Festival at Dartington Hall in Devon to speak about her friendship and working relationship with the 100-year-old war veteran Captain Tom, who raised almost £40m for the NHS during the pandemic lockdown. This is the 50-minute audio recording of the video of that event, minus the first few minutes due to a technical fault. We hope you like it.

This exclusive interview with the brilliant Phil Williams on the award winning Times Radio aired on March 31. In it, Wendy and Phil talk about Tom's legacy work - Life Lessons - published April 2 to follow on from his bestselling autobiography Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day. Tom sadly died of Covid two months earlier on February 2, aged 100. Life Lessons, written in his own words before he died, is his parting gift to the world.

In this acclaimed first novel by author and former journalist Wendy Holden, Charlie, a war correspondent turned author who is haunted by her worst journalistic experiences, turns to the history of paper and the materials of JMW Turner to distract her from the ghosts of her past. Her research brings her into contact with Alan, a highly successful artist and Turner scholar. She falls under his seductive spell, only to discover that Alan has plenty of ghosts of his own. A book rich in history and war, love and obsession, yet intertwined with a thriller’s mysterious undercurrent, this novel is designed to wrong-foot the reader time and again...

What the Critics Say
A superior novel of suspense in a well-plotted debut...(Holden) weaves pages of esoteric paper lore into a tale that involves tenuous mental stability and growing mystery. Readers who are interested in art history and artists' lives will find themselves enthralled by the depth and scope of information - Publishers Weekly
“With this appealing debut, journalist Wendy Holden turns to fiction, using Taylor as her first name. Her novel claims historical anchoring with a plot featuring retired war-zone journalist Charlotte (Charlie) Hudson’s research of 19th-century British artist JMW Turner’s relation to paper. But it is really a romance between Charlie and a famous contemporary artist, Sir Alan Matheson, who shares an obsession with Turner’s landscapes..... Charlie is an intriguing figure, haunted by her harsh past and her failed marriage. When Charlie begins investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of her new lover’s daughter, the story loses some of its more turgid claims to art and revels in its ability to suspend us for pages in its own thoroughly diverting obsessions." - Library Journal
 "(A) lusciously textured novel of suspense and discovery, full of emotional nuance as accurately and delicately rendered as Turner's clouds." - Booklist
 “Every once in a while I pick up a book by an author totally unknown to me, a book for which there has been no buzz, no recommendation from a friend. Perhaps it’s the cover or the title that influences me to choose this one over that. Maybe it’s just kismet. Whatever it was that drew me to this book, I am forever grateful… [Taylor Holden’s] writing is exquisite—rich and textured… What Holden has done so supremely well… is blend in the rather obscure information about the art of papermaking and the influence this “simple” material had on the artists who used it. This is not a novel that drops in somebody’s latest hobby; this is a fine character-driven suspense story that envelopes the reader in a world where passions run deep and hope and life is renewed. It's books like this one that keep me coming back every time...I have the eternal hope that there is another gem like this out there that I may just stumble across when least expected....” - Mystery News
"Journalist Charlotte Hudson, exhausted, is casting around for her next project when she meets famed though reclusive artist Sir Alan Matheson in a Great Russell St. art supply shop and is smitten with the whole idea of paper--and with Alan. Though it unfolds with a lushly detailed pace, you'll find what follows gripping not just for the story and its wringing suspense, but for its art history and its richly detailed story of papermaking, paper in all forms for all purposes but especially its use in the art of JMW Turner, the controversial Romantic landscape/seascape painter whose life had a seamy side." - The Poisoned Pen 
"A fascinating novel - one that will hold your interest throughout the book. The two main characters are well drawn and the reader will feel the mystique and wonder about each of them as they read (on). For anyone who is an art historian, this book will be a double treat. ..An engrossing read and one that I highly recommend. To top it off, it is Taylor Holde

This is the audio only of a video presentation that aired at the end of 2020 featuring Edna Adam Ismail, the 'Muslim Mother Teresa' whose life of selfless devotion is soon to be a film. Her autobiography,  A Woman of Firsts, published by Harper Collins, broke new ground. Here is some more information about it----

Imprisonment. Mutilation. Persecution. Edna Adan Ismail endured it all – for the women of Africa. 
Edna saw first-hand how poor healthcare, lack of education and ancient superstitions had devastating effects on Somaliland’s people, especially its women. When she suffered the trauma of FGM herself as a young girl, Edna’s determination was set. 
The first midwife to practise in Somaliland, Edna became a formidable teacher and campaigner for women’s health. As her country was swept up in its bloody fight for independence, Edna rose to become its First Lady and first female cabinet minister.
She built her own hospital, brick by brick, training future generations in what has been hailed as one of the Horn of Africa’s finest university hospitals.
This is Edna’s truly remarkable story.

On this the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Wendy Holden author of Born Survivors and One Hundred Miracles, reflects on how our experience of the coronavirus pandemic can impact on our thoughts about this memorial day #LightInTheDarkness #HMD2021

A beautiful glassmaker. Two damaged men who love her. Set in exotic Bohemia and the wilderness of an English coast, this is a story of obsession and passion and fear…
 
Wendy Holden explains where she found the unlikely inspiration for her latest novel, The Cruelty of Beauty, set in pre-revolution Czechoslovakia and Norfolk. 'A seed had been planted in my writer’s imagination - the nucleus of a yellow-green flower that would blossom into my next novel. What if I created a glassmaker as a central character, a young woman who worked with uranium glass yet didn’t fully appreciate how dangerous it was? The more I thought about it, the more the seed germinated into a fully-grown bloom.....'