Daisy Georgia Goodwin is an English writer and television producer. She has published several novels and eight anthologies of poetry.
Early life
Goodwin was born and raised in London. She is the daughter of the film producer Richard B. Goodwin and the interior decorator Jocasta Innes. Her parents separated when she was five and then divorced. She is of Irish and Argentinian ancestry. Her half-brother is the writer Jason Goodwin, whom her father adopted. Interviewed by Rachel Ward of The Daily Telegraph in 2019, she said: "I grew up surrounded by creative people", and she would return home "to find Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman sat on the sofa having tea". Her great-great-great-grandfather was Irish clergyman Robert Traill, whose character she included in an episode of the second season of her TV drama Victoria which addressed the Irish famine in the 1840s. Traill was played by Martin Compston.
Career
After attending Queen's College, London and Westminster School, Goodwin studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge. After attending Columbia Film School, as a Harkness Scholar, she joined the BBC in 1985 as a trainee television assistant producer in arts, and a producer-director in 1987, working on programmes like Bookmark. Her contract was not renewed in 1989, but Goodwin rejoined the BBC in 1992, and worked on Omnibus, and created Bookworm, The Nation's Favourite Poems and Home Front. In 1998, Goodwin moved to Talkback Productions as head of factual programmes, becoming editorial director by 2003. In 2005, Goodwin founded Silver River Productions. Earlier in her career, she had turned down fashion advisors Trinny and Susannah because she considered them too posh to work in television, but is said to have discovered Lucy Worsley, placing the historian under contract for her first series in 2011. Her first novel, My Last Duchess, was published in the UK in August 2010 and, under the title The American Heiress, in the U.S. and Canada in June 2011. Goodwin has also compiled multiple poetry anthologies, the first being The Nation's Favourite Love Poems in 1997, and written a memoir entitled Silver River. She was chairman of the judges for the 2010 Orange Prize for women's fiction, and commented in a New Statesman interview that "a recommendation from a woman is more interesting to me than what a man might tell me to read". She has presented television shows including Essential Poems and Reader, I Married Him. Jane Thynne, in The Independent described her as proving to be "triumphantly telegenic" in the former which was Goodwin's front of camera television debut. Goodwin is the author of the novel Victoria, and creator and writer of the TV series Victoria which was broadcast in the UK by ITV from 2016 and in the U.S. by its co-commissioners, PBS/Masterpiece from 2017. Mike Hale, reviewing the series for The New York Times in early 2018, preferred Victoria over The Crown, the series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. In November 2017, Goodwin said that on a professional visit to 10 Downing Street she had been indecently touched by a civil servant, but had not complained at the time. In an interview with the Radio Times, she claimed that repeats of Dad's Army were influencing Brexit.
Personal life
Goodwin is married to Marcus Wilford, a television executive; they have two daughters. She appeared in the BBC television documentary Public School about Westminster directed by Jonathan Gili, and as part of the winning Trinity College, Cambridge team on the Christmas University Challenge BBC2, 27 December 2011. In 2012, she appeared on a Children in Need episode of "Only Connect" alongside Charlie Higson and Matthew Parris.
Production credits
BBC
The Bookworm
Looking Good
Homefront
Talkback
Between 1998 and 2005 Goodwin worked as a producer or editor on shows including:
