Eleanor Updale was born in 1953 and grew up in Camberwell in South London.
She studied history at St Anne's College, Oxford in the 1970s.
degree at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary College, University of London in 2003.
Her research into early members of the Royal Society was awarded a PhD in History by the university in 2007.
[2] Updale was a producer of television and radio current affairs programmes for the BBC from 1975 to 1990.