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After gaining a degree from Oxford in modern languages, she ignored the call of academia and soon became features editor for British Vogue. With her first husband, the journalist and author William Shawcross, she lived in Washington during Watergate and Vietnam during the war. Her writing career evolved slowly: as an academic without the backing of an institution, and interested in "making bridges between different strands of cultural life," one of her greatest struggles has long been that of self-definition. "In many respects I'm what used to be called a frivolous woman," she says. "I'm not totally given to the life of the mind."
Critical recognition, a string of honorary degrees and a fellowship last year at Cambridge have helped. Warner, who is working on both a third novel and a book about representations of the invisible--ghosts, the soul and so on--is now content to call herself a "freelance academic" or "independent scholar." Both of which make her much happier than "lady writer."