Bel Mooney

Bel Mooney (born Beryl Ann Mooney on October 8 1946) is an English journalist and broadcaster born in Liverpool.

Early life

She was born in Broadgreen Hospital to Gladys (nee Norbury) and Edward Mooney. She initially grew up in Liverpool on a council estate called The Green on Queen's Drive. She passed her eleven plus and went to Aigburth Vale Girls’ High School (merged with another school to become Calderstones School in 1989). She moved to Wiltshire at the age of fourteen, when her parents bought their first house. She then attended school in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, at Trowbridge Girls' High School (merged with a boys' grammar school to become the comprehensive John of Gaunt School in 1974). She passed eight O levels and took English, Latin and Art at A level. She had tried to gain entry to the University of Oxford but at that time nobody from her girls' grammar school had achieved that. So she went to London and obtained a distinguished First in English Language and Literature from University College London in 1969. She met her first husband and philosophy student, Jonathan Dimbleby, there when both working on the student newspaper called Pi and they married in February 1968 in Kensington after knowing each other for four months.

Career

Giving up her idea of postgraduate work, Mooney became a journalist in 1969, contributing first to the Bath Chronicle and the Times Educational Supplement (whilst teaching part time in Bath) then got her first job on Nova Magazine as Assistant to the Editor. In the early seventies, Mooney wrote for the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Cosmopolitan and many others. From 1979-80 she was a columnist on the Daily Mirror. She has also been a regular columnist for The Times (from 2005-7), The Sunday Times (from 1982-3) and The Listener (from 1984-6). From 1970-9 she was a freelance journalist. (Her reference to Margaret Thatcher in Nova magazine in 1973 as a 'possible future Prime Minister' is believed to have been the first suggestion of its kind in the media.) In January 1976 she wrote a deeply personal article for the Guardian newspaper about the experience of having a stillborn child. This article was to have far-reaching effects as it was the first time a journalist had written on the subject with such raw feeling, and it directly inspired a shift in the awareness of how to treat stillbirth as well as the foundation of the Stillbirth Society, later to be known as SANDS. As well as her fiction (see below) Mooney has written many other books, including 'Bel Mooney's Somerset' (1989) and a memoir about love, loss, recovery - and dogs: 'Small Dogs Can Save Your Life' (2010).

Novelist and Children's Author

Having made her name as a journalist, columnist, and broadcaster, she turned her hand to writing fiction for adults and children. In 1985 she collaborated with Gerald Scarfe on a satire on Margaret Thatcher and her government, called 'Father Kissmas and Mother Claws.' Mooney's novels for adults are The Windsurf Boy (1983), The Anderson Question (1985), The Fourth of July (1988), Lost Footsteps (1993), Intimate Letters (1993) and The Invasion of Sand (2005). (She is the author of the best-selling 'Kitty and friends' series of stories for young girls, including I Don’t Want To! and So What, which were inspired by her own daughter, Katherine, or Kitty as she is known. There were 13 volumes in all, published 1985-2002. She then went on to write a series of six books inspired by her small dog Bonnie, with titles like 'Big Dog Bonnie' and 'Brave Dog Bonnie'. In all, she published 26 books for children and young people. In addition, Bel Mooney has written many short stories for magazines and collections. Published in France as 'Petula,' 'Big Dog Bonnie' is currently on a shortlist of six for the prestigious Prix Tam-Tam. Her fiction (adults and children) has been translated into eleven languages.

Broadcasting

She was a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4 from 1982 until 2008, notably as presenter of Devout Sceptics, a programme devoted to public figures' private beliefs, not necessarily agnostic or atheistic, as the name might suggest. She also made many series for Channel 4 (for example 'Mothers By Daughters') and BBC2 (for example, 'Grief') and one-off documentaries on people like Ellen Wilkinson MP and Dora Russell. As the 'story' itself, interviewed many times of radio and television, Mooney has been active in ecological campaigning. In particular she was involved, like her former husband, in the campaign against the Batheaston Bypass in the mid 1990s. During the eighties and nineties she wrote six novels and made many programmes for television and for Radio 4.

Daily Mail

In June 2007 she began writing a weekly column for the Saturday edition of the Daily Mail (after two years in the same role at The Times), advising readers on emotional and relationship issues, and she contributes other comment articles to the paper as well as regular book reviews.

Awards and Charities

She has honorary degrees from the University of Bath in 1998 and Liverpool John Moores University in 2002 and is a Fellow of University College London. 'Devout Sceptics' (BBC Radio 4) won a Sandford St Martin Trust award for religious broadcasting, and the children's novel 'The Voices of Silence' won a New York Public Library citation and was shortlisted for a Gold Medal in the State of California. She has won special awards for journalism from charities including CRUSE. She has been a judge of the Whitbread Book of the Year award and the Orange Prize - and is known as an accomplished public speaker. In the nineties she was involved in the decision to set up a new literary festival in Bath, and introduced the first ever 'performer', Ted Hughes, in 1996. From 2002 until 2011 she was actively involved in charitable fund-raising in Bath, as Chairman of 'the egg' appeal (to built a dedicated theatre for young people), President of the Royal United Hospital appeal to built a new NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care) unit, and Chair of the 2010 appeal to refurbish the Theatre Royal Bath. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of that theatre.

Personal life

Mooney was married to the television journalist Jonathan Dimbleby for thirty-five years when they lived on an organic farm. The couple separated in 2004 after his affair with opera singer Susan Chilcott; since 2006 they have been divorced. They have two adult children, Kitty (born 1980), a freelance journalist and charity consultant and Daniel (born 1974), a television producer/director who now has his own business, The Splitscreen Icecream Company. On September 8, 2007, Mooney married Robin Allison-Smith, a freelance photographer, with whom she lives on the outskirts of Bath.

External links

• Bel Mooney Homepage

News items

• Frances Hardy. "The anguish, heartache and courage of Bel Mooney" Daily Mail 10 June 2007: Interview with Bel Mooney. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
• Independent March 1998
• Independent January 1993