Magdalen Goffin is the youngest daughter of the philosopher and historian E. I. Watkin by his wife Helena Shepheard. She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton and St Anne’s College, Oxford. She is married to Richard Goffin, for thirty years Director of book Promotion at the British Council and has two daughters. she is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her most recent book was a life of her father, published as The Watkin Path in 2007.