Her "Georgiana" biography in 1998 won the U,K.'s prestigious Whitbread Prize. In 2011 she also published an epic non-fiction study, "A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War".
Is a citizen and resident of both the U.S. and U.K. She and her brother Jonathan were born in England where her screenwriter/producer father, Carl - and second wife Estelle - had exiled themselves following McCarthy-era blacklisting in the U.S. She attended both Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University before earning a graduate degree from Oxford.