Author and TV writer's hit factory

THE CELEBRATED novelist and screenwriter Charlotte Bingham was only 19 and working as a typist at MI5 when she published her first autobiographical book, Coronet Among The Weeds. She went on to have a hugely successful literary and screenwriting career spanning more than six decades.

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Bingham was the daughter of novelist and secret MI5 officer John Bingham, who was later revealed to have been the inspiration for John le Carré's spy character George Smiley. When she was about five years old, the young “Lottie” stumbled across her father’s revolver but she only realised what he did for a living at the age of 18, when he told her about his secret life.

Her mother, Madeleine, was a playwright and biographer, so writing was definitely in Charlotte's blood from the outset.

She first began putting pen to paper aged 10, a thriller called Death's Ticket, while still at school in Haywards Heath, West Sussex.