Samantha Weinberg is a Britishnovelist,journalist andpodcaster. Educated atSt Paul's Girls' School andTrinity College, Cambridge, she is the author of books such asA Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth and theJames Bond-inspired trilogyThe Moneypenny Diaries under the aliasKate Westbrook. Since 2019, she has been a contributor toTortoise Media. In 2023, she wrote and narratedTrace of Doubt, an eight-part true crime podcast series forAudible.
In 1994, Weinberg wroteLast of the Pirates: in search of Bob Denard (ISBN 0224033077) about French mercenaryBob Denard. In 1995, she spent three months travelling in the United States withDaisy Waugh.[1]
Weinberg's 2000 bookA Fish Caught in Time chronicled the 1938 rediscovery of thecoelacanth, a fish long thought extinct.[2] Canadian authorLouise Penny has named it as one of her favorite books.[3]
In 2003, Weinberg won theCWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction for her bookPointing from the Grave: a True Story of Murder and DNA (ISBN 0241141362), about the murder of biotechnologist Helena Greenwood in California in 1985 and the pioneering use ofDNA profiling in tracing her killer 15 years later.
When Weinberg's agent,Gillon Aitken, was appointed the literary adviser toIan Fleming Publications, she and Aitken pitched their idea for a series of James Bond novels centred on the character ofMiss Moneypenny,M's personal secretary. The series, referred to asThe Moneypenny Diaries, is a trilogy with three books and two short stories currently published under the alias of Moneypenny's editor, Kate Westbrook:
Weinberg is the first woman to write an official Bond novel.[4]
In 2010, Weinberg became theGreen Party candidate for the new seat ofChippenham in Wiltshire, standing under her married name.[5][6]
Weinberg is married to filmmaker Mark Fletcher.[1] She currently resides inWiltshire, England, and has two children.[7]
