Sophie Dahl

Sophie Dahl (born Sophie Holloway on 15 September 1977) is an English author and former fashion model. Her first novel, The Man with the Dancing Eyes, was published in 2003 followed by Playing With the Grown-ups in 2007. In 2009, she wrote Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights, a cookery book which formed the basis for a six-part BBC Two series named The Delicious Miss Dahl. In 2011, she published her second cookery book From Season to Season. Her first children's book, Madame Badobedah, was released in 2019. She is the daughter of Tessa Dahl and Julian Holloway and the granddaughter of author Roald Dahl, actress Patricia Neal, and actor Stanley Holloway. Early life and education Dahl was born in London in 1977 to the actor Julian Holloway and the writer Tessa Dahl, who were unmarried Dahl's parents separated shortly after her birth. Through her mother, Dahl has three half-siblings. As a child, Sophie frequently spent time at both her maternal and paternal grandparents' houses in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and East Preston, West Sussex, respectively. Dahl has noted that her childhood was "an odd one, but with such magic". Dahl attended 10 schools and lived in 17 homes in various locations including London, New York, and India. Writing career In 2003 Dahl published her first book, an illustrated novella and Times bestseller, The Man with the Dancing Eyes (Bloomsbury Publishing). From 2005, she was a contributing editor and regular columnist at Men's Vogue, until its closure in 2008. Her next books were Playing with the Grown-Ups (2007) and two cook books, Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights (2009) and From Season To Season (2011). She was a contributor to an anthology, Truth or Dare, edited by Justine Picardie, which included works by Zoë Heller and William Fiennes. She also provided introductions to the Puffin Classic new edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and the Virago Press re-issue of Stella Gibbons' 1938 novel Nightingale Wood – both released in April 2009 – and Nancy Mitford's Don't Tell Alfred, reissued by Penguin in March 2010. In March and April 2010 a six-part cookery series, "The Delicious Miss Dahl", which Dahl wrote and presented, was broadcast on BBC 2. She wrote and presented a social history documentary about the Victorian cook Isabella Beeton, which was transmitted on BBC 2 on 29 September 2011.