Linda Proud was born on July 9, 1949 in Hertfordshire, the only child of William Wilfred Proud and Sybil Grace Proud.

Her career as a picture researcher in publishing, which began in the 1970s, was mostly as a freelance. She now teaches creative writing to students of Sarah Lawrence College (Oxford programme) and acts as an editor for a major literary consultancy. She lectures frequently both on creative writing and the Renaissance, and often leads study tours in Italy. With her husband, David Smith, she founded Godstow Press in 2003 to publish creative literature with a philosophical content.

An early interest in the work of Sandro Botticelli (1444—1510) led to study of the social and political history of the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici and, inspired by Mary Renault, the idea of writing a historical novel. In 1974 she embarked on a programme of research into the period which took eleven years. The first draft of the novel was so unwieldy that she immediately split the story into three.

The historical character that Linda Proud connected with most powerfully was not Botticelli but the poet, Angelo Poliziano. Botticelli, however, is a consistent thread in all three novels, each of which is inspired by one of his mythological paintings: Primavera, Pallas and the Centaur, The Birth of Venus.

A Tabernacle for the Sun deals with 1472—1478 and the Pazzi Conspiracy. Pallas and the Centaur is set in the following two years, when the Medici family and Florence were under severe threat. The final novel, The Rebirth of Venus, covers the period of the exile of the Medici and the rise of Savonarola. Each book is narrated by a fictional character, Tommaso de’ Maffei, but almost every other character is historical. Linda Proud goes to extraordinary lengths to harmonise accuracy of detail with the power of story-telling, and her achievement in this is highly acclaimed by the academic community (‘A historical writer of genius’ — Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig). The first book was originally published by Allison and Busby, but its reprint and the subsequent volumes are published by Godstow Press.

Linda Proud’s novels have been inspired by, and often compared to, the work of Mary Renault, Marguerite Yourcenar and H.F.M. Prescott.

Non-fiction

• Consider England, with Valerie Petts (1994) ISBN 0-85683-145-X
• 2000 Years of Christianity (1999) ISBN 0-85372-932-8
• Icons — a sacred art (2000) ISBN 0-85372-990-5
• Angels (2001) ISBN 1-84165-041-2
• Designing with Photographs, with Peter Bonnici ISBN 978-2-88046-353-3

Children’s fiction

• Knights of the Grail (1995, 2003)ISBN 1-903843-16-2

The Botticelli Trilogy

• A Tabernacle for the Sun (1997, 2005) ISBN 978-0-9547367-2-9
• Pallas and the Centaur (2004) ISBN 978-0-9547367-0-5
• The Rebirth of Venus (2008) ISBN 978-0-9547367-6-7