Latest novels by Royal High alumnae

We are delighted to share the news of two of our alumnae who have had their novels recently published.

Elizabeth Buchan, who left the Royal School in 1964 has released her latest book Two Women In Rome which is out now in paperback.

After graduating from the University of Kent at Canterbury with a double honours degree in English and History, Elizabeth Buchan began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books. It was not until she had married, had children and been a fiction writer at Random House that Elizabeth started writing.

Two Women In Rome is Elizabeth’s seventeenth book, and her short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for The Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and, currently, for the Daily Mail. She has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliott literary prizes, and twice been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) awards. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival, a co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival and a past Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Alumna Freya Berry is also due to release her second novel in June, The Birdcage Library. The novel tells the story of Emily Blackwood, an adventuress and plant hunter who travels north for a curious new commission.

Freya left RHSB in 2002 when her parents moved to Bristol and then went on to read English at Trinity College Cambridge. Following University Freya became a journalist at Reuters, covering corporate mergers and acquisitions and later Brexit. Around the time Freya decided to quit and write a book she had an offer from the Daily Mail to cover the 2016 US election in New York. This planted the seed for her first novel, The Dictator's Wife.