Sally Vanessa Beauman (née Kinsey-Miles, 25 July 1944 – 7 July 2016) was an English journalist and writer, author of eight widely translated and best-selling novels.Beauman was born in Totnes, Devon, England. She was educated at Redland High School and Girton College, Cambridge.She worked for two years as a critic and contributing editor for New York magazine, for which her first assignment was interviewing Norman Mailer. She was the first recipient of the Catherine Pakenham Award in 1970 for journalism, and at the age of 24 edited Queen magazine, also becoming the arts editor of The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. She worked as an investigative journalist, interviewer and critic for many leading publications in Britain and the USA, including The New Yorker. It was an article about the work of Daphne du Maurier in this magazine that eventually led to her writing Rebecca's Tale, her companion novel to du Maurier's "Rebecca". Wikipedia