Nadine Vanessa Dorries (née Bargery) is a British fiction author and politician who served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport from 2021 to 2022. Her first novel, The Four Streets, which draws on her Liverpool Catholic background, became a No.1 best-selling e-book with 100,000 copies sold.
Nadine Dorries became famous not for her writing, but she is a sought-after author. By 2022, Dorries had published 16 books and announced a series of six more with publisher Head of Zeus.
Nadine Dorries was born in Liverpool in the 1950s and raised on a council estate, the daughter of a bus driver. She spent part of her childhood living on a farm with her grandmother and attended school in a small remote village in the west of Ireland.
Her family lived quite poorly. In addition, her parents divorced during her early teens. The worst part is that Dorries was abused by a priest and family friend at the age of nine, but never reported this to the police.
After school, Nadine Dorries trained as a nurse. In 1984, she married financial adviser Paul Dorries. She came late to active politics, and until 1997, had considered joining Labour. Nadine ended up having a successful career in politics and business.
Additional popularity was brought to her by television. In 2010, she appeared on the Channel 4 documentary series Tower Block of Commons, which challenged politicians to live on a council estate and get by on a jobseeker's allowance. Two years later she signed up for the ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
In 2013, Dorries signed a contract to write the Four Streets series of novels based on her experience of growing up in Liverpool. Savaged by the critics, they became best-sellers, as did the Lovely Lane series, about a group of young nurses in the city.
When Boris Johnson made Dorries culture secretary in September 2021 Doctor Who scriptwriter Gareth Roberts told her criticizers: "Dorries may not win plaudits from the arts world. But as her book sales show, she has a quality her detractors, and let's face it, her peers and predecessors, will never have: an understanding of what people actually enjoy."
