AUTHOR NEWS
The woman behind call girl Belle de Jour has finally revealed herself. Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist from Bristol, in England, unmasked herself to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper as one of the literary world's best-kept secrets. She admitted that she didn't want to have the secret that she once worked and wrote about being a high-class prostitute hanging over her any more. She says on her online blog: "What it took me years to realise is that while I've changed a lot since writing these diaries - my life has moved on so much, in part thanks to the things that happened then - Belle will always be a part of me. . . . Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together." Magnanti started working for a London escort agency in 2003 to raise money while doing her PhD. As Belle de Jour, she penned several books, including The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl and Playing the Game, and even her agent didn't know her real identity. Her story inspired the TV show The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper.