Maeve Binchy was born and educated in Dublin. She is the author of the bestselling books Tara Road, Evening Class, This Year It Will Be Different, The Glass Lake, The Copper Beech, The Lilac Bus, Silver Wedding, Firefly Summer, Echoes, Light A Penny Candle and London Transports, three volumes of short stories, two plays and a teleplay that won three awards at the Prague Film Festival. She has been writing for The Irish Times since 1969 and lives with her husband, Gordon Snell, in Dublin.