Nicola Thorne was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her father was English and her mother a New Sealander, and she was brought up and educated in England. She graduated in Sociology at the London School of Economics, but always wanted to pursue a literary career and worked as a reader and editor while writing her first novels. In 1975 she left publishing to write full and and has now written a number of successful novels under the pseudonym Nicola Thorne. She lives in St. John's Wood, London.