Penny Vincenzi: Bestselling novelist famed for her escapist blockbusters

Her books may have been packed with strong female characters, sex and romance, but the writer and former journalist was known for being astute, strong-willed, humorous and self-deprecating

(Rex)

Penny Vincenzi was a former fashion journalist turned bestselling romantic novelist who earned the moniker “the doyenne of the modern blockbuster”, writing 17 novels and two short story collections, and selling more than seven million copies worldwide.

Vincenzi, who has died aged 78, got her break following an interview with Jilly Cooper on her latest book, Riders, in 1988, when she told the author, “I want to write this kind of nonsense too.” Cooper set her up with her agent Desmond Elliot.

The two met and, over a long lunch at Fortnum & Mason, Vincenzi’s first novel, Old Sins, about intrigue in the cosmetics business, was developed further. Then, with only three completed chapters, Elliot managed to sell the book to Anthony Cheetham at Century Hutchinson for a six-figure sum. Upon hearing the news, Vincenzi “nearly passed out”.

Thereafter, she never looked back, turning out epic 700-page bestselling tomes almost every two years. Tackling topics ranging from the publishing empire of the Lytton family in The Spoils of Time trilogy to trouble at the Lloyd’s insurance market in An Absolute Scandal, Vincenzi’s escapist novels with strong female characters, sex and romance earned her a devoted legion of followers that she never took for granted.

With her journalistic career in the fashion world providing a wealth of material, her novels featured resolute, tough women battling their way to success, and love; men in the boardroom rescuing glamorous businesses on the brink of collapse; lovers lost and found, and secrets revealed. The settings ranged from the country houses of the roaring Twenties, through the swinging Sixties to the boom and bust of more recent years.

From her favourite room, her study littered with hundreds of photographs of her family and every inch of wall space crammed with Polaroid cover shots, framed bestseller lists, prized invitations and yellowing notes bearing silly/touching messages, Vincenzi had an objective – to create an opening line that was more memorable than her last, a technique learned as a journalist.

One observer believed it reached its zenith in her 2011 novel, The Decision, set in 1958, which opened with, “Eliza was in the middle of curtseying to the Queen, when she decided it was time she lost her virginity.’’ It worked; the book was a huge seller.

Unperturbed by snooty literary critics who gave damning reviews, Vincenzi never claimed to be producing great literature, explaining, “I am not a literary author. I am a popular one,” and unashamedly placed her novels in the “sex-and-shopping” category.

She described herself as “a storyteller who can make people forget their own lives and problems… and enjoy beautiful old cars and jetting about and lovely meals in lovely restaurants”.

However, it was not just her formidable heroines, glitz, romance and action that made her novels popular, it was also the huge character lists and complex plots; The Best of Times (2009), for example, explored the myriad effects on a vast cast following a motorway pile-up.

Never viewed as arrogant or having airs and graces, Vincenzi was astute, strong-willed, humorous and self-deprecating, which made her popular with colleagues and rivals alike. A stickler for deadlines despite always writing far more than agreed, she took editorial direction without complaint and was never precious about words being cut, sometimes many thousands.

She once said, “I know I must be a disappointment to people … The rest of my life doesn’t match up with the sort of books that I write.”

Described as a workaholic who would get “tense and ill at ease” if she took more than a week off from writing, she never travelled without her laptop when decamping to her holiday cottage on the Gower peninsula, south Wales. Working until the end, Vincenzi’s daughters said, “She always said she wanted to die at her typewriter. Only last week she was still galloping through her new novel, so she fulfilled her ambitions to the last.”

Born in Bournemouth, just before the war in April 1939, Penelope Hannaford was the only child to Stanley, a bank manager, and his wife, Mary (née Hawkey), a housewife. Growing up, she recalled, “There is only you to please your parents … You tend to be quite a self-starter, quite ambitious.”

As a child, she was surrounded by books and listed Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Ian Fleming’s Moonraker among the books that shaped her literary sensibility.

Aged nine, took her first literary steps when, using her mother’s typewriter, she laboriously typed some of her own stories in triplicate, creating a magazine, which she then sold successfully at school. While at Totnes Grammar, she progressed to “dreadful novels, full of forbidden passion and harrowing childbirth scenes”, and edited the school magazine.

After schooling in Devon, the family moved to London where she attended Notting Hill and Ealing High School. After taking her A-levels, she worked at the Harrods library, although as a humble member of staff was not permitted to enter the main Harrods building but used another, over the road, connected by a tunnel. Working on the fourth floor, she dealt with customers in person or over the phone, handling readers with the letter S.

Most customers treated them as minions, though the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent was an exception, “a sweetheart, very polite”. Penny “struggled to take down the book titles and names of gentlefolk with plummy voices” and although always fearing the sack, she grew to love it.

Deciding against university, she attended a “posh secretarial college with a journalism strand in London” before working on her local parish magazine, though this ended in dismissal for “being glib about the ladies’ sewing guild”.

Soon after she was working as a junior secretary at Vogue, likening the experience to the film “The Devil Wears Prada, except I wasn’t beautiful like Anne Hathaway”. But she was smitten with the fashion world, which would later provide a plethora of material. She then moved to the society magazine Tatler, where she became the editor’s secretary.

During this time, she had fallen instantly in love with Paul Vincenzi, an advertising executive she had met on a blind date. They married in 1960. Two years later she joined the Daily Mirror, working as the secretary for the agony aunt and women’s editor Marjorie Proops, before progressing to the fashion desk; Proops, learning of her journalistic ambition, mentored her and remained a lifelong friend until her death in 1996. Proops even supported Vincenzi when she was pregnant, at a time when women were usually forced to leave work.

Throughout the 1960s Vincenzi continued to work within fashion, working as fashion editor for the magazine Nova, before being sacked, then becoming beauty editor at Woman’s Own, followed by a stint at Options magazine and then working extensively for Cosmopolitan. She recalled, “Looking back, listening to so many weird stories over the years was excellent training for a novelist.” She also wrote for The Times and the Daily Mail.

Heavily influenced by and eternally grateful to Proops, in later years Vincenzi was always interested in the lives and careers of those with whom she worked, particularly supporting younger women, writers such as Sophie Kinsella and Jenny Colgan.

The unexpected death of her husband, who had been a “superb sounding board for plot wrestling and development”, from a brain tumour in 2009, affected her greatly. However, she stoically continued working despite her own ill health, as it helped keep her mind occupied. She was suffering from the cryoglobulinemia, a rare, debilitating blood disorder, which almost killed her in 2013.

Her last novel, A Question of Trust, was published in October 2017. At the launch, she said, “If nobody buys it, it will be my last book; otherwise, no, I don’t want it to be my last book... I still love writing and the whole process.”

She was preparing the next, based on a Biba-style 1960s fashion house, influenced by her close friend Barbara Hulanicki, who founded Biba in 1972. Other fashion friends included Mary Quant and designers John Bates and Jean Muir. In her free time, Vincenzi enjoyed nothing more than sitting down chatting with friends over a bottle of wine.

Vincenzi is survived by her four daughters, Polly, Sophie, Emily and Claudia.

Penny Vincenzi, novelist, born 10 April 1939, died 25 February 2018