Wendy Holden's Podcast

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 an...

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 supe...

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 c...

Thirty years after she first heard his voice singing to her from a jukebox at her local drive-in, Barbara Ann Blakely began her love affair with Frank Sinatra. After a tempestuous courtship, she finally heard him say the wedding vows that began his fourth, final, and most enduring marriage; one that would last more than two decades until the end of his life. Generous and jealous, witty and wicked, Frank comes alive in this poignant inside story of the highs and lows of marriage to one of the ...

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 at the bidding of her mother, 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 countr...

THE COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold heartache around the world and the subsequent lockdown separated thousands of people from their loved ones. But for one disabled boy and his three-legged rescue dog who captured the hearts of millions, being forced to live apart was especially hard.

This lockdown podcast was a first for me, a request to answer questions about life lessons as if I were leaving them on a telephone answering machine. In it I talk about Born Survivors, the human instinct for survival, the nature of evil and how to bring about change in the world.