Deborah Moggach (born Deborah Hough on 28 June 1948) is a British writer. She has written sixteen novels to date, including The Ex-Wives, Tulip Fever, and, most recently, These Foolish Things. She has adapted many of her novels as TV dramas and has also written several film scripts, including the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for Pride & Prejudice. She has also written two collections of short stories and a stage play. In February 2005, Moggach was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by her Alma Mater, the University of Bristol. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former Chair of the Society of Authors, and is on the executive committee of PEN.[1]
The daughter of two writers, Charlotte and Richard Hough, she was one of four daughters — and has two adult children herself: Tom, a teacher, and Lottie, a journalist. Moggach was brought up in Hertfordshire and London, and was educated at Queen's College, London. She has lived in Pakistan and the United States. She graduated from the University of Bristol in 1971 with a degree in English and trained as a teacher before going to work at Oxford University Press, where she met her husband Tony, from whom she is now divorced.
For ten years, her partner was the cartoonist Mel Calman.[2] After his death in 1994, she lived for seven years with a Hungarian painter, Csaba Pasztor. She currently lives in a house overlooking Hampstead Heath in North London.