Allison Pearson Popular Books
Allison Pearson Biography & Facts
Judith Allison Pearson (née Lobbett; born 22 July 1960) is a British columnist and author. Pearson has worked for British newspapers such as the Daily Mail, The Independent, the Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph, and the Financial Times. She has also worked as a presenter for Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4. Pearson's chick lit novel was published in 2002; a film adaptation with the same title, I Don't Know How She Does It, was released in 2011. Pearson campaigned in favour of Brexit and in 2016 described Brussels as the jihadist capital of Europe. She has criticised the Gender Recognition Act 2004, and opposed transgender rights, describing them as a "an evil trans ideology". Early life Born in Carmarthen, Pearson moved to Burry Port, Carmarthenshire as a young child. She lived in Leicestershire, and attended Market Harborough Upper School (now Robert Smyth School). Her family moved to Washdyke Lane in Nettleham, where she attended Lincoln Christ's Hospital School, and won a prize for History in the sixth form; she gained A-levels in English, History and French. Her sister Kathryn, born in 1964, four years below her at school, took A-levels in the same subjects. She studied English at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating with a lower second class degree (2:2). Career Journalism Pearson began her career with the Financial Times, where she was a sub-editor, before moving to The Independent and then The Independent on Sunday in 1992. There she was assistant to Blake Morrison before becoming a television critic, winning the award for Critic of the Year at the British Press Awards in 1993. Pearson was a columnist with London's Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph, then took over from Lynda Lee-Potter at the Daily Mail. Pearson ended her column for the Daily Mail in April 2010, when it was said that she was to join The Daily Telegraph. In September 2010, Pearson resumed her role as a columnist with The Daily Telegraph. As of 2015, Pearson was a columnist and chief interviewer of The Daily Telegraph. Pearson has presented Channel 4's J'Accuse and BBC Radio 4's The Copysnatchers. She participated as a panellist on Late Review, the predecessor of Newsnight Review. Pearson is on the Media/PR Advisory Council of Toby Young's Free Speech Union. Books Pearson's first novel, I Don't Know How She Does It (2002), was a "chick lit" examination of the pressures of modern motherhood. The book was a bestseller in the UK and the US, selling four million copies, and was made into a film. Pearson was sued by Miramax for non-delivery of a second novel, I Think I Love You, for which she received a US$700,000 advance in 2003. Delivery was due in 2005: it was published in 2010. The novel was about a teenager's passion for David Cassidy in the 1970s and the man writing the so-called replies from David Cassidy to the teenage fans, who meet up 20 years later after marriage, divorce, and children. The Daily Telegraph praised the novel for its warmth and sincerity; however, The Guardian described it as an "unrealistic and sappy romance". A sequel to I Don't Know How She Does It was published in September 2017. The novel, How Hard Can It Be, continues the story of the protagonist Kate Reddy, now approaching 50 and struggling with bias against older women in the workplace. The book attracted considerable publicity, but was not a bestseller. Views Islamic terrorism Shortly after the first of the 22 March 2016 Belgian bombings, Pearson suggested that the attacks were a justification for the Brexit cause in the then-upcoming referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, writing on Twitter that "Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU!" Her tweet was criticised by Kay Burley and The Guardian columnist Owen Jones. Following the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, Pearson called for terror suspects in the United Kingdom to be interned. Transgender issues Pearson views transgender identity as "an evil trans ideology" and "a warped ideology". In 2017 she described a review of the Gender Recognition Act as "spineless politicians, pathetically eager to be on-trend" and that the review was due to "biological science lies". Covid-19 pandemic Pearson said during the COVID-19 pandemic that she would not wear a protective face mask because she considered it demeaning. In September 2020, Pearson suggested purposely infecting young people with COVID-19 to create herd immunity within the population. In January 2021, Pearson drew censure from Twitter users after outing a critic's employer on Twitter, following her claim that National Health Service (NHS) bed occupancy during the pandemic was lower than suggested. According to The Guardian, Pearson has made misleading claims about COVID-19. In December 2020, she wrote in her Telegraph column that "Last week, Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty presented another of their Graphs of Doom; this one cherry-picked several hospitals on course to run out of beds." However, this was false, and no such data was presented in the period stated. In July 2021, she misleadingly tweeted that hospitalisations were 0.5% of Covid-19 cases; Full Fact found that the calculation was incorrect, but also did not make sense due to the lag between testing positive and hospitalisation. Personal life Pearson was married to fellow journalist Simon Pearson, in May 1988 in Lincoln. She subsequently lived with Anthony Lane, a film critic for The New Yorker. Allison Pearson was declared bankrupt following a personal insolvency order made by the High Court of Justice in London on 9 November 2015. The bankruptcy petitioner was the Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs. Bibliography I Don't Know How She Does It (2002) ISBN 0-7011-7302-5 I Think I Love You (2010) ISBN 0-7011-7697-0 and ISBN 978-0-7011-7697-6 How Hard Can It Be? (2018) ISBN 978-1250086082 References Video clips S4C Without Walls clip from 1994 External links Allison Pearson at IMDb. Discover the Allison Pearson popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Allison Pearson books.
Best Seller Allison Pearson Books of 2024
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Straight Up
Catriona McCloudVerity Drummond is a florist by trade and a fantasist by nature. When her husband, Kim, leaves her, she deals with the pain by writing Straight Up, a novel in which a man on a moun...
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Wife in the North
Judith O'ReillyHow far would you go to be the perfect mother? The hilarious Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly, based on her enormously popular blog, recounts one woman's attempt to move her fa...
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The Love Hypothesis
Laura StevenAn LGBT romantic comedy with a twist from the Comedy Women in Print prize winner Laura Steven, author of The Exact Opposite of Okay. A hilarious love story with bite, for fans of S...
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None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive
Carolyn PrusaPerfect for fans of Maria Semple and Jennifer Weiner, this “laughoutloud gem” (Beck DoreyStein, New York Times bestselling) of a debut novel follows Ramona through the fortyeight h...
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The Well
Catherine ChanterSet in a modernday Britain where water is running out everywhere except at the farm of one seemingly ordinary family whose mysterious good fortune leads to a shocking act of violen...
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Just Like Proper Grown-Ups
Christina Hopkinson'You don't really grow up until you either have a kid or one of your parents dies.' Glamorously carefree and nearing forty, Tess shows no sign of settling down. That is, until s...
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Playgroups and Prosecco
Jo MiddletonA hilarious and totally relatable book about the adventures of a single mum, for fans of Catastrophe and Motherland. Readers of Why Mummy Drinks, Unmumsy Mum and The Single Mum's W...
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How to Be Second Best
Jessica DettmannA hilarious and heartwarming novel about the complicated, messy, delightful struggles of modern life, for all fans of Marian Keyes, Holly Wainwright and Zoe Foster Blake.Going from...
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The Story of the Amulet
Edith NesbitAt the end of Five Children and It the five children promised not to ask the Psammead for another wish as long as they lived, but expressed a half wish to see it again some time. T...
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Substitute Me
Lori L. TharpsZora Anderson is a 30yearold African American middle class, college educated woman, trained as a chef, looking for a job. As fate would have it, Kate and Craig, a married coup...
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The More You Ignore Me
Jo BrandTHE MORE YOU IGNORE ME IS NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING SHERIDAN SMITH, SHEILA HANCOCK, RICKY TOMLINSON AND ELLA HUNT. Jo Brand's lifeaffirming novel The More You Ignore Me addresses m...
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Parenting the First Twelve Years
Victoria Cooper, Heather Montgomery & Kieron SheehyConcrete, researchdriven advice on humanity's oldest, hardest jobWhy is parenting so fraught and so difficult in today's society? There has never been a time when advice was so rea...
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The Accidental Mother
Rowan ColemanWhat do you do when you are a child' s last hope? From bestselling author Rowan Coleman comes a deeply touching tale of a fasttrack career woman whose life takes a sharp right ...
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Miss Marjoribanks
Margaret Oliphant & Elisabeth JayReturning home to tend her widowed father Dr Marjoribanks, Lucilla soon launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to raise the tone with her select Thursday evening parties...
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Pillars Of Salt
Joanna BellAlice's world is blown apart when her husband Rob dies suddenly of a heart attack in another woman's bed. Only 40, Rob was an energetic, opinionated, handsome local GP. This wasn'...
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The Princesse De Cleves
Madame LafayetteSet towards the end of the reign of Henry II of France, The Princesse de Clèves (1678) tells of the unspoken, unrequited love between the fair, noble Mme de Clèves, who is married ...
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A Different Kind of Happy
Rachaele Hambleton'A powerful story of family, hope, growth and second chances' Anna Mathur Happiness comes in all shapes and sizes.Jo said goodbye to peace and quiet when she got pregnant at 19, bu...