Sally Bedell Smith

Sally Bedell Smith is the New York Times best-selling author of eight biographies. Her latest , George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy (Random House 2023) is the definitive biography of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s mother and father, based for the first time on special access to their letters and diaries in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle that was granted to the author by the Queen Ms. Smith has also written best-selling biographies of King Charles III, Queen Elizabeth II, Diana, Princess of Wales, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Pamela Harriman, and William S. Paley. Translations of her books have been published in more than a dozen countries. An on-air contributor to CNN since 2017 offering analysis and commentary on the British royal family, Ms. Smith was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair from 1996 to 2018. She previously worked at Time and The New York Times , where she was a cultural news reporter. She received the 2012 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, an award presented by the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, and Elizabeth the Queen won the 2012 Goodreads Choice Award for best book in history and biography. In 2012 Ms. Smith was also the consultant to playwright Peter Morgan on The Audience, his award-winning drama about Queen Elizabeth II starring Helen Mirren. In 2020 she was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) by Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, her alma mater. She received her M.S. from Columbia University. Sally Bedell Smith is the mother of three children and resides in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Stephen Smith.