Joanna Trollope is the author of many highly acclaimed and bestselling novels, including The Rector's Wife, Marrying the Mistress, Daughters in Law, City of Friends, and An Unsuitable Match. She was appointed OBE in 1996 and CBE in 2019, a trustee of the National Literacy Trust in 2012, and a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund in 2016. She has chaired the Whitbread and Orange Awards and has judged numerous other literature prizes including chairing the BBC National Short Story Awards for 2017. She has been part of two DCMS panels on public libraries and is patron of numerous charities, including Meningitis Now and Chawton House Library. In 2014, she updated Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility as the opening novel in the Austen Project. Mum & Dad is her twenty-second novel.