She won a place at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, West London, and spent a year as a foreign student in France, at the Universitaire de Grenoble, studying French language and literature.
Following her childhood role model, Robert Louis Stevenson, Brayfield decided to begin her writing career as a journalist and joined Nova[2] magazine as a trainee sub-editor.
Her Fleet Street experience of celebrity culture led to her first book as sole author of Glitter: The Truth About Fame, a non-fiction study commissioned by feminist editor Carmen Callil at Chatto & Windus.
[5] Brayfield developed a growing interesting in how writers learn to write while doing the rounds of promotion tours and literary festivals.
Audience questions led to a series of lectures which were the foundation for Bestseller: Secrets of Successful Writing commissioned by Victoria Barnsley at Fourth Estate.