Catherine Mayer

Catherine Mayer is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist, the former Europe editor of TIMEmagazine and the co-founder and President of the Women’s Equality Party and Primadonna Festival. Widowed at the start of the pandemic, she also runs the music estate of her late husband, legendary guitarist, producer and Gang of Four founder, Andy Gill. She finished and executive-produced a double album, The Problem of Leisure, that he was working on at the time of his death. Her books include Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly about the changing attitudes to age and ageing, Attack of the 50ft Women, described as ‘a compelling feminist call to arms’, and a memoir, Good Grief. Her biography Charles: The Heart of a King generated worldwide headlines with its claims of dysfunction in the royal courts and was a Sunday Times top-ten bestseller. She started writing Time/Life in 2019 in the back of a Gang of Four tour bus. The first draft eerily foreshadowed the loss to come. The final version makes something beautiful out of it.