Bernardine Anna Livia Mary Bishop (née Wall; 16 August 1939 – 4 July 2013) was an English novelist, teacher and psychotherapist.[1] Her first novel, Perspectives, was published by Hutchinson in 1961. During a half-century break between publishing her first two novels and her third, the 2013 Costa prize-nominated Unexpected Lessons In Love, she brought up a family, taught, and practised as a psychotherapist.[2]
Diagnosed with cancer of the colon in 2008, and subsequently forced to give up her psychotherapy work because of the illness, she reinvigorated her literary career by writing three novels, of which Unexpected Lessons In Love was the first. The book had only just been published when, having been informed that her condition was terminal, she decided to withdraw from chemotherapy and "turn her face towards Jerusalem".[3] She died the following July.