One of Britain's most acclaimed novelists, Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester 1959.

After rejecting her adoptive parents' strict religious lifestyle and running away from home as a teenager, she supported herself through school with a series of part-time jobs and then gained a place to study English at Oxford University.

Her first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was published in 1985, won a Whitbread Prize and was made into an acclaimed BBC TV series.

As well as subsequent novels, such as The Passion (1987) and The Powerbook (2000), Jeanette Winterson has written a TV film, Great Moments in Aviation, and contributes regular columns to The Guardian.