M.J. Robotham

M. J. Robotham is a British novelist known for historical and crime fiction. She writes under two names: Mandy Robotham for her historical dramas and M. J. Robotham for fiction set outside the wartime period. She is best known for her USA Today and Globe and Mail bestselling novels, which have sold more than one million copies. Her most recent book is Mrs Spy (2025).

Robotham grew up wanting to write. She has said that she viewed herself as an aspiring author from the age of nine. She first trained as a journalist and later worked for many years as a midwife. In interviews, she has explained that she always felt “a book in there somewhere.” She wrote between shifts, often with what she described as a flat white at hand.

After completing an MA in Creative Writing, she began to publish fiction. Her debut novel appeared in 2018 and marked the start of her career as a full-time author. As Mandy Robotham, she wrote seven historical novels. These books explored birth, loss, and the private lives of women during the upheavals of the twentieth century. They reached bestseller lists in the United States and Canada.

In 2023, she began writing under the name M. J. Robotham. It was announced that she would produce two further novels for Head of Zeus: The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux (2024) and Mrs Spy (2025). This new phase allowed her to shift from wartime Europe to the cultural change of the mid-twentieth century.

Mrs Spy follows Maggie Flynn, a widowed mother and covert MI5 operative in 1960s London. The novel combines domestic life with espionage, set against Cold War fears. A chance meeting with a Russian agent forces Maggie to confront the secret past of her late husband and to question her own loyalties.

Mandy Robotham lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire, with her partner and her two sons. She has described herself as a slow but steady gym-goer, a lifelong fan of Jane Austen, and a knitter of what her children call “odd things.”

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