“Jennifer Robson’s crowning achievement! A sensitive, introspective examination of post-war Britain and the way its damaged citizens piece their lives together: a harried hotelier struggling to save her family home, a half-Indian war hero turned artist, a Jewish photographer and Holocaust survivor haunted by past losses. All three find hope and opportunity in the imminent crowning of their new queen, whose coronation will change their lives forever. CORONATION YEAR shimmers on every page.” — Kate Quinn, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Diamond Eye

Jennifer Robson is the acclaimed author of seven historical novels, all of them international number-one bestsellers: Somewhere in France, After the War is Over, Moonlight Over Paris, Goodnight from London, The Gown, Our Darkest Night, and Coronation Year. Her books have been translated into 17 languages and several have been optioned for film and television. In 2019, Jennifer won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction for The Gown.

Jennifer studied French literature and Modern History as an undergraduate at King’s University College at Western University, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where she obtained her doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.

Jennifer is a respected speaker on topics ranging from the historical legacy of the two world wars to the importance of integrating creative practices into one’s life-work balance. She is a contributor to The Globe and Mail newpaper and makes frequent appearances on television, radio, and a number of podcasts to discuss her novels and insights as a historian.

Jennifer's Featured Titles

Coronation Year: A Novel

William Morrow |
Historical Fiction

The USA Today bestselling author of The Gown returns with another enthralling and royal historical novel— as the lives of three very different residents of London’s historic Blue Lion hotel converge in a potentially explosive climax on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation.

It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel.

  • Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day, Queen Elizabeth in her gold coach will pass by the hotel’s front door, allowing Edie to charge a fortune for rooms and, barring disaster, save her beloved home from financial ruin. Edie’s luck might just be turning, all thanks to a young queen about her own age. 
  • Stella Donati, a young Italian photographer and Holocaust survivor, has come to live at the Blue Lion while she takes up a coveted position at Picture Weekly magazine. London in celebration mode feels like a different world to her. As she learns the ins and outs of her new profession, Stella discovers a purpose and direction that honor her past and bring hope for her future.
  • James Geddes, a war hero and gifted artist, has struggled to make his mark in a world that disdains his Indian ancestry. At the Blue Lion, though, he is made to feel welcome and worthy. Yet even as his friendship with Edie deepens, he begins to suspect that something is badly amiss at his new home.

When anonymous threats focused on Coronation Day, the Blue Lion, and even the queen herself disrupt their mood of happy optimism, Edie and her friends must race to uncover the truth, save their home, and expose those who seek to erase the joy and promise of Coronation Year.

Our Darkest Night: A Novel of Italy and the Second World War

William Morrow Paperbacks |
Historical Fiction

To survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer’s wife in this unforgettable novel from USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Robson—a story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true events, that vividly evokes the most perilous days of World War II.

It is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive—to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met.

Nico Gerardi was studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary to run his family’s farm. A moral and just man, he could not stand by when the fascists and Nazis began taking innocent lives. Rather than risk a perilous escape across the mountains, Nina will pose as his new bride. And to keep her safe and protect secrets of his own, Nico and Nina must convince prying eyes they are happily married and in love.

But farm life is not easy for a cultured city girl who dreams of becoming a doctor like her father, and Nico’s provincial neighbors are wary of this soft and educated woman they do not know. Even worse, their distrust is shared by a local Nazi official with a vendetta against Nico. The more he learns of Nina, the more his suspicions grow—and with them his determination to exact revenge.

As Nina and Nico come to know each other, their feelings deepen, transforming their relationship into much more than a charade. Yet both fear that every passing day brings them closer to being torn apart . . .

The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding

William Morrow |
Historical Fiction

USA Today Bestseller!

A Real Simple Best Historical Fiction novels of the year!

The Gown is marvelous and moving, a vivid portrait of female self-reliance in a world racked by the cost of war.”–Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network

From the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century—Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it.

“Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of color on the long road we have to travel.”

—Sir Winston Churchill on the news of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcoming wedding

London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?

With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.

 “For fans of “The Crown,” looking for history served up as intimate drama, and those seeking another angle on royal lives, “The Gown” seems likely to dazzle and delight.” – The Washington Post

Goodnight from London: A Novel

William Morrow Paperbacks |
Historical Fiction

From USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Robson—author of Moonlight Over Paris and Somewhere in France—comes a lush historical novel that tells the fascinating story of Ruby Sutton, an ambitious American journalist who moves to London in 1940 to report on the Second World War, and to start a new life an ocean away from her past.

In the summer of 1940, ambitious young American journalist Ruby Sutton gets her big break: the chance to report on the European war as a staff writer for Picture Weekly newsmagazine in London. She jumps at the chance, for it’s an opportunity not only to prove herself, but also to start fresh in a city and country that know nothing of her humble origins. But life in besieged Britain tests Ruby in ways she never imagined.

Although most of Ruby’s new colleagues welcome her, a few resent her presence, not only as an American but also as a woman. She is just beginning to find her feet, to feel at home in a country that is so familiar yet so foreign, when the bombs begin to fall.

As the nightly horror of the Blitz stretches unbroken into weeks and months, Ruby must set aside her determination to remain an objective observer. When she loses everything but her life, and must depend upon the kindness of strangers, she learns for the first time the depth and measure of true friendship—and what it is to love a man who is burdened by secrets that aren’t his to share.

Goodnight from London, inspired in part by the wartime experiences of the author’s own grandmother, is a captivating, heartfelt, and historically immersive story that readers are sure to embrace.

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Finding my muse at midlife (and becoming a bestselling author along the way)

After obtaining my doctorate in history from the University of Oxford, I left academe, became an editor and journalist, and set my love of history aside for a decade of nine-to-five office-bound work. I only returned to history, and a long-abandoned childhood dream of becoming a writer, when I found myself at home with two small children, an idea for a novel about the First World War, and the unquenchable urge to write. It took me a year and a half to write that first book, and nearly twice as long again to see Somewhere in France published, but my decision to persevere — to embrace my need for a creative outlet — changed my life. While few writers are destined to see their books at the top of bestseller lists, those who persevere in their art will see their lives change for the better.

In this presentation I invite participants to imagine how they can find a place in their busy lives for their chosen artistic medium, and to consider how even a few minutes a day engaged in artistic pursuits can improve their focus and commitment at work, their physical and mental health, and their relationships with loved ones.

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Write the story of your life, or the novel of your dreams, in only 15 minutes a day

In this presentation I’ll share the story of how I wrote my first novel while at home with small children, almost no time to spare, and little more than my own imagination to guide me. I’ll offer advice on how to find time to write (even if your schedule is packed), how to make the best use of those precious minutes, how to develop an outline (and know when to leave it behind), and how to edit and polish your emerging manuscript into something you’re proud to share with your family, friends, and even strangers. This presentation will include take-home summaries and resources for aspiring novelists and non-fiction writers.

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Why this Canadian Gentile feels compelled to write about the Holocaust

Growing levels of ignorance of the historical truth of the Holocaust, along with an increasing incidence of antisemitism in our own communities, are a distressing and dispiriting concern for historians like myself. In the immediate post-war era the significance and horrors of the Shoah were widely understood, but as those with direct experience of those years pass away, and the gulf between the Second World War and the present stretches ever wider, the calamitous risk of forgetting grows ever more perilous.

I am a Gentile, with no direct ties to the Holocaust, yet I find myself returning to it again and again as a central theme in my historical novels, and always with the same goals: to listen, to learn, to remember, and to warn.

In this presentation I will discuss the painstaking research I undertake in order to write, with true reverence and respect, the stories of those who suffered, died, and endured. I’ll speak of my own newly discovered connection to the Holocaust in northern Italy. And I will explain why I feel such a sense of urgency to remember, and why I invite anyone with a connection or interest in those dark and desperate years to do the same.

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Honors, Awards & Recognition

USA Today, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller
Globe and Mail and Toronto Star number-one bestseller
Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist
Alumna of Distinction at King’s University College, Western University in 2022
Received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction for The Gown in 2019
More than 700,000 copies of Jennifer’s novels are in print around the world
Jennifer’s novels have been translated into 17 languages, most recently Bulgarian
Jennifer has appeared as a featured author at more than two dozen writers’ festivals across the United States and Canada, most notably the Tucson Festival of Books, the Toronto International Festival of Authors, the Decatur Book Festival, the Vancouver Writers’ Festival, the Morristown Festival of Books, and the Alice Munro Festival

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

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