Victoria Hislop is a British author. Educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford, she worked in publishing and as a journalist before becoming an author. Her first novel The Island, which the Sunday Express hailed as the new Captain Corelli's Mandolin, was a Number 1 Bestseller in the UK, its success in part the result of having been selected by the Richard and Judy Book Club for their 2006 Summer Reads. She married journalist and Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop on 16th April 1988. They have two children and live in Kent.