Joanna Vaughan

Joanna grew up in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and graduated with a degree in German from Durham University.

She studied Russian and Fine Art at the University of Tübingen in Germany and has lived in Switzerland, where she worked in a campsite shop in Interlaken. On her return to Scarborough, Joanna got a job making fruit salads in the café of the Stephen Joseph Theatre-in-the-Round, at its former home in Westwood, before she embarked on a career in journalism.

She was a reporter for The Yorkshire Evening Press – based in York and Pickering, and then for the Leicester Mercury. Joanna became deputy editor of the Herts & Essex Observer before moving to the Daily Mail as a sub-editor.

During a career break to look after her three children, she wrote freelance articles for a number of publications including The Sunday Telegraph and Evening Standard, and served as a school governor at a South London primary school.

She runs the school newspaper at a primary school in Kent, where she also delivers literacy and history workshops based on the First World War, under her own company By Jove Productions.

Joanna lives in a village in Kent with her three children.