Magdalen Nabb

Who was Magdalen Nabb?

Magdalen Nabb was a British author, best known for the Marshal Guarnaccia detective novels.

Born near Blackburn in Lancashire as Magdalen Nuttal, she was educated at the Convent Grammar School, Bury, before going on to art college in Manchester, where she studied arts and pottery, which she taught in an art school. In 1975 she moved to Florence in Italy with her son, Liam, even through she didn't speak Italian. There, she continued to work on pottery in a pottery town near Florence, and began writing. It was in Montelupo that she met the model for "Marshal Guarnaccia". Her first book, Death of an Englishman, was first published in 1981. All her stories take place in Florence which she describes as a "very secret city". She lived near enough to the Carabinieri station to stroll there regularly and have a chat with the marshal, who kept her up to date on crime in the city.

She also wrote the Josie Smith books for children and did occasional journalistic pieces for English, German and Italian papers. In 1991 she won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Josie Smith and Eileen, the second book in the series. Her final novel, Vita Nuova, was posthumously published in 2008.