Deborah Moggach (née Hough; born 28 June 1948) is an English playwright, novelist and screenwriter. She has written nineteen novels, including The Ex-Wives (1993), Tulip Fever (1999; made into the 2017 film of the same name), These Foolish Things (2004; made into the 2011 film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and Heartbreak Hotel (2013). Her film scripts include Pride and Prejudice (2005).
Moggach is one of four daughters of writers Charlotte Hough (née Woodyadd) and Richard Hough. Moggach was brought up in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and St John's Wood in London, and was educated at Camden School for Girls and Queen's College, London.
She graduated from the University of Bristol in 1971 with a degree in English, and then trained as a teacher before going to work at Oxford University Press. She lived in Pakistan for two years in the mid-1970s and in the United States.
Most of her novels are contemporary, tackling family life, divorce, children and the confusions and disappointments of relationships. She has an ear for comedy but has also written a dark thriller set in America, The Stand-In (1991); a bleak story of incest set near London Heathrow Airport, Porky (1983); and a novel pitting Muslim versus English family values, Stolen (1990).
Her two historical novels are Tulip Fever (1999), set in Vermeer’s Amsterdam, and In The Dark (2007), set in a boarding house during the First World War. Her 2015 novel, Something to Hide, is set in Texas, London, Beijing, and West Africa. The Indian subcontinent has featured frequently in her work.
Her other work includes two collections of short stories and a stage play.
She has adapted many of her novels as TV dramas.
She has written acclaimed adaptations of other people's work, including
Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate
Pride and Prejudice (2005), starring Keira Knightley, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award,
Goggle-Eyes, from Anne Fine's novel, which won a Writers Guild Award.
By other writers of Moggach works
Other writers have adapted novels by Moggach, including
These Foolish Things, her comic novel about elderly people moving to India to obtain affordable care, was made into the successful film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Tulip Fever was made into a film.
In 2005, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bristol; she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former Chair of the Society of Authors and was on the executive committee of English PEN. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to literature.
At Oxford University Press, she met the man who became her first husband, Tony Moggach; the couple later divorced. He died in November 2015.
For ten years, her partner was the cartoonist Mel Calman.