Journalist, editor and PR Sarah Orton says she feels "most alive" when she is writing fiction and it has been a lifelong ambition to become a published author. With Sarah celebrating her newly published debut novel Tummy Love, the rising authoress is already working on her second novel Room to Let – a psychological thriller set in 1970s London.
Sarah Orton was born in London in 1964, to the eminent consultant orthodontist Harry S Orton OBE and Shelagh, a mathematician and practice manager. The family of six moved to a rambling house in Surbiton, Surrey in the late sixties and Sarah was raised on what she affectionately calls the "original set of 'The Good Life'" (after the hit British TV sitcom in the 1970s) with animals on their lawn, a huge kitchen garden and their cupboards filled with homemade pickles and jams. As Sarah's father treated his orthodontic patients in the front of the house (with pop stars and princes among them), her mother rustled up a fantastic meal every evening using all the home produce, which sparked Sarah's lifelong love affair with creative home cooking.
Sarah also discovered a natural talent for "stringing words together" at a very early age and after graduating from catering college, Sarah wrote a recipe book in her first job and then went on to train to become a journalist. She quickly shone and aged just 23 became the youngest editor in one of the major British publishing houses in the 1980s, editing a baking magazine. Sarah set up her PR agency 25 years ago with her husband and has worked with many of today's well known celebrity chefs in Britain including Raymond Blanc, Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay. She has also worked for several global and iconic visual artists including Art Attack's creator Neil Buchanan, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood. Her work has been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines and she edited one of the leading art magazines for several years. Sarah has lived in rural Kent with her husband and two children, Sophie and Harry, for the past 22 years and describes the children as her "raison d'être".
