Home - Wendy Moore : Author

Wendy Moore - Author and freelance writer

Wedlock: the no 1 bestseller and TV Book Club choice!

My next book: Author unveils the story of real Prof Higgins and Eliza Doolittle read all about it!

Follow me on twitter @wendymoore99

Wedlock' is one of 10 books chosen for the TV book club on Channel 4. The book was discussed on March 21 & 22.

Buy the book

Wedlock read by Rebecca Hall - Audio book on sale now

Countess of Strathmore letter sold at auction - Times story: Letter reveals how Queen's ancestor Mary Eleanor Bowes escaped marriage

'...for anyone who enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr Whicher this is a must read.' -Amazon review

Wedlock chosen as a book of the year by Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley

Wedlock for book groups - see the readers' guide and interview here

See the digital book at Random House

'... Moore (is) mistress of suspense' ... Observer

'A gripping story, brilliantly told' ... Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

'spectacular ... compulsively readable' ... Washington Post

'mesmerising' ... Financial Times

'This splendid book, well researched and richly detailed, is as gripping as a novel' ... Daily Telegraph

'An extraordinary story of class, culture, sexism and prejudice' ... The Times

'Wedlock is the best biography I have read in a long time' ... Daily Mail

'Moore has meticulously constructed an ever more compelling tale’ ... The Guardian

'heart-poundingly powerful' ... Saga

Wedlock is published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and in the US by Crown. The book tells the remarkable true story of the extraordinary marriage between Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, and Andrew Robinson Stoney, a debt-ridden Irish fortune-hunter, while also illuminating the history of marriage itself.

Does Wedlock pass the page 99 test? Find out here

Hear my interview on BBC Woman's Hour - listen here

Read the Daily Mail digest - click here

Hear my interview on BBC Radio 4 Today - click here

See News and Events to book tickets for my talks

Also by Wendy Moore:

The Knife Man: Blood, Body-snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery

Winner of the Medical Journalists’ Association Consumer Book Award 2005

'Medicine needs more John Hunters, and biography needs more Wendy Moores.’

– New York Times

‘Excellent … Wendy Moore has helped to pay the debt we all owe to this short-tempered dyslexic healer’

– Sunday Telegraph

‘A stunning, gruesomely compelling biography … Brilliant’

- Alison Weir, author and historian

‘I don’t think I’ve ever read a biography that I’ve enjoyed quite as much as this one … It’s a winner all round – and now I’ve finished it, I’m going to start all over again.’

- Claire Rayner, writer, broadcaster and health adviser

To read more reviews click the button

The first biography of John Hunter for 25 years and the most comprehensive ever, The Knife Man reveals the remarkable world of this eighteenth-century pioneer who honed his skills on bodies stolen from graveyards, collected exotic animals from around the world and anticipated evolutionary theory in advance of Darwin.

Revered and feared in equal measure, John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of eighteenth-century London. Rich or poor, aristocrat or human freak, suffering Georgians knew that Hunter’s skills might well save their lives – but if he failed, their corpses could end up on his dissecting table, their bones and organs destined for his macabre museum. Maverick medical pioneer, adored teacher, brilliant naturalist, Hunter was a key figure of the Enlightenment who transformed surgery, advanced biological understanding and even anticipated the evolutionary theories of Darwin. He provided inspiration both for Dr Jekyll and Dr Dolittle. But the extremes to which he went to pursue his scientific mission raised question marks then as now.