Liz Hodgkinson

Liz Hodgkinson is an author and journalist who has written more than 50 books,. Her books have been translated into over 20 languages. She has also written articles for most of the major British national newspapers in London, magazines for women. She has taught journalism for a decade.

Hodgkinson was born Elizabeth Garrett, and grew up,in the small Cambridgeshire town of St Neots.

She attended Huntingdon Grammar School, which was co-educational and which is now named Hinchingbrooke School. At the school she became a close friend of Amaryllis Garnett and was influenced by the bohemian household of David and Angelica Garnett, later describing it as "a magic garden". As she complains on her personal website's blog, although she would have liked to try to go to Oxford University, it was actually considered impossible for a girl to get to Oxford or Cambridge from her coed grammar school, although some boys got there. Because it was thought a total impossibility, girls did not even try. She has written that her parents would have been happy enough for her to leave school at 16 and train as a secretary. "They had no idea of higher education or careers." However, she wanted more from a career, so she attended Durham University where she studied English. Hodgkinson has written that her period at university was dominated by an obsession she developed for a male student, which began at first sight and was to overshadow her subsequent relationships.

After a short stint teaching, Hodgkinson became a freelance reporter/columnist. At first, in the years 1966–1970, she worked in Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England, on the Thomson Newspapers the Evening Chronicle, the Newcastle Journal, and the Sunday Sun.

During these years she married Neville Hodgkinson, also a journalist, who would also become a Daily Mail science and medical columnist and author of books. She gave birth to their two sons Tom and Will, both of whom grew up to be journalists and authors like their parents.

Then the family moved to London, to a house in Richmond, and (like her husband) Hodgkinson got a series of jobs in Fleet Street. In 1971-1972, Hodgkinson was Deputy Editor of the mother and baby magazine Modern Mother (long since defunct), and then in 1972-3 she worked as a columnist on the London Evening News. She then worked on four national newspapers: the Sunday People, the Sun, the Daily Mail, and the Times, where she was Women's Editor for a time during 1986. After that, in 1986 she became a freelance journalist, writing for the Times, The Guardian, The Independent, the London Evening Standard, and again for the Daily Mail.

During her career as a journalist and columnist writing for newspapers, Hodgkinson began writing books, while continuing writing for newspapers.

Using her experience as a journalist, she taught beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes in journalism at City Literary Institute for 10 years (1995-2005). One of her books, Ladies of the Street, was about the women who transformed journalism in Britain, from the heart of London in Fleet Street, from the late 19th century to the present day.

She has written books mostly on four main subject areas, over time: first health; then lifestyle, including topics around religion and special ways of life (influenced by her by then ex-husband Neville's involvement with Indian religion); then biography, particularly of some individuals with changing sexuality; and latterly, as a complete change, real estate and property matters.

She continues to contribute for publications and websites, including the Daily Mail’s Femail pages, the Daily Telegraph, and the magazines House Beautiful, The Lady, and Woman.

In the 1980s Hodgkinson's husband Neville became involved with the Brahma Kumaris religious movement. It began in 1981 but it was 7 years before, when their sons had reached adulthood, although he writes that he deeply loved his wife, the marriage ended in divorce. He moved to the Brahma Kumaris retreat centre at Nuneham House, Oxfordshire.

She had always felt sad and somehow slightly cheated at not getting into Oxford at the age of 18 but was delighted to move to that city in her older years after 36 years in London and then (from 2006) three years in Worthing.

In the late 1980s, possibly as part of this personal crisis, although theirs was an amicable divorce, she began to think about the subject of how people can deal with such situations, and published a book on celibacy as a solution to personal problems. She followed that with Bodyshock, a journalism book on transsexuality.

After her divorce, she again suffered obsessive thoughts about a male student from her university days. She sought psychotherapy and wrote a book on the experience: "I believe that with obsessive love, time is no healer at all. The experience of obsessive love can be likened to dropping a stitch in knitting, and never picking it up. The knitting never quite looks right from then on, unless we unpick it and start again from the mistake."

She has seen her two sons become journalists and authors, and they have (as of late 2016) between them given her five grandchildren. After her divorce, she became friends with journalist John Sandilands, then saw him as her partner; and for many years they shared a holiday flat in Worthing, West Sussex; but she has lived alone since his death in 2004. In 2006, with Hodgkinson having lived in London for 36 years, the Worthing flat became her main home for three years. However, in September 2009 she left Worthing to live in Central North Oxford.

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Guild of Health Writers and the National Landlords’ Association.

A selection of Femail articles by Hodgkinson in recent years, accessed 9 March 2017. The titles given here are mostly shortened from the headlines on the linked pages (for space reasons).

• Why can’t people understand that losing dear friends can hurt far MORE than losing family? (14 December 2016)
• Is it just me? Or is the sight of middle-aged couples holding hands really rather creepy? (7 August 2016)
• Go to the doctors? Never! (25 April 2016)
• Hair in the shower ... Why women are the house guests from HELL (18th Nov 2015)
• Parents having to bail out their grown-up children (29th Oct 2015)
• Tina Turner proves that older people can still be sexy (23rd Feb 2015)
• Think you can’t have a sex life past 70? Think again! (22nd Feb 2015)
• Over 70 and yes, I admit I CAN’T live without alcohol: a startlingly frank confession (18th Nov 2014)
• Should you keep your husband’s name when you divorce? (8th Oct 2014)
• Any woman must be MAD to marry over 60 (16th Jul 2014)
• They were wild 60s teens - until Liz’s best friend became a nun (10th Jun 2014)
• The loneliness and endless regret of being a divorced grandmother (7th Aug 2013)
• Wish you could airbrush away your wrinkles? Now you can - but, like me, you may regret it (28th Jun 2013)
• The REAL signs you’re becoming a wrinkly (19th Jun 2013)
• We fought for equality. So why do greedy wives still sponge off their ex-husbands? (8 May 2013)
• How unrequited love can torture your soul for ever (5th Apr 2013)
• Phew! I’ll never moan about not seeing my grandchildren again: (4th Mar 2013)
• Sex over 60? One writer laments: “If only the men were up to it!” (27th Feb 2013)
• I adore my grandchildren but to them I’m just an old bat (29th Jan 2013) to which Tom Hodgkinson replied the same day: I’d love Mum to see more of her grandchildren
• Her sons had wild parties, took drugs and wore so much make-up they were mistaken for girls (14th Jan 2013)
• Dating sites for us oldies? Only if you could love a total loser! (5th Dec 2012)
• The husband I love left me for the man upstairs...that’s God, just in case you’re wondering (14th Nov 2012)
• Many of us oldies drink because it’s the only thing we’ve got left to enjoy (2nd Nov 2012)
• Why married men want to give widows like me a lot more than tea and sympathy (13th Oct 2012)
• You’re a real trouper Anne, but at 68 (like me) it’s time to grow old gracefully (2nd Oct 2012)
• So when does middle age really start? (20th Sep 2012)
• This trend for older parents is, I fear, creating unhappy, stressed and spoiled children (1st Aug 2012)
• I hated my brother. When he died, all I felt was happiness (31st Jul 2012)
• Living alone after divorce can feel like liberation (4th Jul 2012)
• Why do men over 50 dress like tramps? (20th Jun 2012)
• Why DO older men find it so hard to fall in love again? (30 May 2012)
• Poisoned legacy of the Bloomsbury Set (23 May 2012)
• Only a Mad Woman would call the 50s a golden age (1 May 2012)
• Dream of being reunited with your first love? (13th Apr 2012)
• Granny knows best (and don’t argue or it’s off to bed with no tea) (2nd Sep 2011)
• I must be getting old - I’ve started penny pinching! (20th Jul 2011)
• Five dates in five days and I still can’t find a single, fun and not TOO geriatric man! (15th Jul 2011)
• Where ARE all the decent men in their sixties? (10th Apr 2011)
• Reality bites: £3,500 for a new tooth? Being wrinkly’s such a massive rip off (3rd Mar 2011)
• Why are all older men so stupefyingly BORING? (15th Sep 2010)
• Rise of the SWOFTY (Single women over 50): I’m too busy having fun to be a grandmother (1st Sep 2010)
• The first-time buyers’ flats that no one can buy (14th Aug 2010)