Matilda Emily Mary "Tilly" Bagshawe^[1][2] (born 12 June 1973) is a British freelance journalist and author. She is best known for her books in the vein of best-selling American author Sidney Sheldon, notably Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game and Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness.

Life and work

Born on 12 June 1973 in Lambeth Hospital, London,^[3] Bagshawe is one of three daughters born to Nicholas Wilfrid Bagshawe and his wife, Daphne Margaret (née Triggs).^[4] Her father is from the Bagshawe family of Roman Catholic gentry. They originally hailed from Wormhill Hall, near Buxton, Derbyshire, and Oakes-in-Norton, near Sheffield.^[5][6] Her great-grandfather was the marine artist Joseph Ridgard Bagshawe, who was himself grandson of one of the 19th century's most renowned marine artists, Clarkson Stanfield,^[7] and a nephew of Edward Gilpin Bagshawe, Catholic Bishop of Nottingham. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Frideswide, was the daughter of Charles Robertson, a stockbroker and benefactor of St Philip's Priory, Begbroke and one of the co-founders of Westminster Cathedral.^[8] Her older sister is Louise Mensch, a chick lit author and former Conservative Member of Parliament. She has another sister and a brother.^[9]

She was educated at Woldingham School, Surrey, and while there, she became pregnant. At seventeen, she was a single mother of a daughter, but she finished her studies and at the age of eighteen, she went up to St John's College, Cambridge, with her ten-month-old daughter in tow.

Married to Robin Nydes, a US businessman, she lives between homes in London and Los Angeles, with three children. Now a freelance journalist and novelist, Bagshawe is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times, Daily Mail and other British publications.

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