1. Brooke Magnanti was born on 5 November 1975 and is an American-born naturalised British former research scientist, blogger, and writer, who, until her identity was revealed in November 2009, was known by the pen name Belle de Jour.
21 Facts About Brooke Magnanti
1. 2.
Brooke Magnanti's diary, published as the anonymous blog Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, became increasingly popular as speculation surrounded the identity of Belle de Jour.
3.
In November 2009, fearing her real identity was about to come out, Brooke Magnanti revealed her real name and occupation as a child health scientist.
4.
Brooke Magnanti is honoured in BBC's 100 Women in 2013 and 2014.
5.
Brooke Magnanti graduated from the private Clearwater Central Catholic High School where she was named a National Merit Scholar in 1992.
6.
Brooke Magnanti's pseudonym was derived from the 1928 novel Belle de jour by Joseph Kessel and the 1967 film of the same name starring Catherine Deneuve, directed by Luis Bunuel.
7.
Brooke Magnanti made a page on his blog containing the googlewhack of Belle de Jour and Brooke Magnanti that allowed him to see if anyone googled the two names.
8.
On 15 November 2009, The Sunday Times revealed in an interview that the author's real name is Brooke Magnanti; she was 34 years of age at the time.
9.
Such was the nature of the secret that Brooke Magnanti's colleagues did not know until one month before she went public, her publishers had been unaware of her true identity until the previous week and her parents found out on that weekend.
10.
Brooke Magnanti commented that she had thought a former boyfriend was on the verge of outing her, and later reported him to the police for threats and harassment against her and her partner.
11.
Brooke Magnanti is in a league by herself as a blogger.
12.
Brooke Magnanti's books have been published in the UK, US, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, and China.
13.
From November 2005 until May 2006, Brooke Magnanti contributed a regular column in The Sunday Telegraph.
14.
Brooke Magnanti is an occasional guest on The Book Show broadcast on Sky Arts and has spoken at a number of venues including The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in conversation with India Knight.
15.
Brooke Magnanti has spoken on internet and forensic identity as part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas and was a guest on the Stephen Fry 2011 series Fry's Planet Word.
16.
In 2012 Brooke Magnanti was selected as ambassador for the Inverness Whisky Festival and was ambassador for the festival's gin section in 2015.
17.
Brooke Magnanti went on to work as a biostatistician in the Newcastle University Paediatric and Lifecourse Epidemiology Research Group, researching a possible link between the occurrence of thyroid cancer in under-25s in NE England and radioiodine fallout exposure from Chernobyl in Ukraine.
18.
Brooke Magnanti collaborated on several EU project policy documents regarding human developmental risks of environmental exposure to chlorpyrifos, phthalates, and DecaBDE and HBCD.
19.
Brooke Magnanti met Piper in the course of preparing for the role but maintained her anonymity.
20.
Brooke Magnanti was married and used to live in Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands.
21.
Brooke Magnanti became a British citizen in 2013, and moved back to the United States in 2016.