Miranda Hearn was born in Darlington in 1955 and brought up in Dorset and Wiltshire. In 1973 she went to study theatre, writing and performance at Dartington College of Arts. She worked in the theatre for many years, including acting with a Cypriot company, then as assistant stage manager for Steven Berkoff, taking a production of Hamlet to Israel. Since then she has been assistant to the author and psychoanalyst Masud Khan, worked in the editorial offices of the International Zoo Yearbook at London Zoo, done postgraduate research on the writer Harriet Martineau, and worked as a scriptwriter and in film production, including on the Channel 4 Series TRAFFIK.