Bel Mooney - Career

Career

Giving up her idea of postgraduate work, Mooney became a journalist in 1969, contributing first to the Bath Chronicle and the Times Educational Supplement (whilst teaching part-time in Bath) then got her first job on Nova Magazine as Assistant to the Editor. In the early 1970s, Mooney wrote for the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Cosmopolitan and many others. From 1979-80 she was a columnist on the Daily Mirror. She has also been a regular columnist for the Times (from 2005-07), the Sunday Times (from 1982-83) and the Listener (from 1984-86). From 1970-79 she was a freelance journalist. (Her reference to Margaret Thatcher in Nova magazine in 1973 as a 'possible future Prime Minister' is believed to have been the first suggestion of its kind in the media.) In January 1976 she wrote a deeply personal article for the Guardian newspaper about the experience of having a stillborn child. This article was to have far-reaching effects as it was the first time a journalist had written on the subject with such raw feeling, and it directly inspired a shift in the awareness of how to treat stillbirth as well as the foundation of the Stillbirth Society, later to be known as SANDS. As well as her fiction (see below) Mooney has written many other books, including 'Bel Mooney's Somerset' (1989) and a memoir about love, loss, recovery - and dogs: 'Small Dogs Can Save Your Life' (2010).