Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1955. Her father was the art historian and writer Quentin Bell, acclaimed for his biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf. Her mother Anne Olivier Bell edited the five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s Diaries.
Virginia grew up in the suburbs of Leeds, but the family moved to Sussex when she was in her teens. She was educated at Lewes Priory School (Comprehensive). After a gap year working in Paris, she went on to study English Literature at King’s College Cambridge.
Books in order of publication:
Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Gardens. Frances Lincoln, London, 1997. (With Quentin Bell)
Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939. Viking, London, 2002.
Singled Out – How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War. Viking, 2007.
Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives During the Second World War. Viking, 2011.
Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s. Viking, 2015.
All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1860-1960 – 2024
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