British author Helen Fielding, was born in 1958. A graduate of English at Oxford, Fielding entered the commercial literary field through a media and journalistic route. Armed already with a group of comic writers and performers as friends, including Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, Fielding worked first on the BBC, especially their Sports Relief initiative, and then Thames TV.She then opted for a change of medium, spending the next nine years as journalist and columnist on several big-name London newspapers, such as 'The Sunday Times', 'The Telegraph' and 'The Independent'.
Indeed, it is 'The Independent' that forms the backbone of her wider literary success. It was here that, as an anonymous column in 1995, 'Bridget Jones's Diary' started life, eventually spawning two bestselling novels, and two even more successful movie adaptations, starring the likes of Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. The novels themselves, have been published in over 40 countries, and have sold over 15 million copies, becoming, according to the Guardian, one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.
