Jean Hood read English Literature at the University of Durham and began her professional career working in the cardboard industry as an advertising copywriter.
Her subsequent research on the 18c East Indiaman, ‘Winterton’, spanning two decades, became the subject of her first non-fiction book, Marked For Misfortune, published in 2003 by Conway Maritime Press.
In 2006, Hood released Come Hell and High Water, an examination of several infamous or less well-known shipwrecks, to general critical acclaim.
[5] In an interview with The Sentinel in August 2010, Hood explained the intention of her latest work, Carrier: A Century of First-hand Accounts of Naval Operations in War and Peace (2010): ‘my book tells the human, rather than the technical, story of aircraft carriers and naval aviation, using eye-witness stories from those who served.’[6] Navy News described it as ‘probably the definitive book on life in the capital ship of the past seventy or so years… pretty much everything involving carrier operations, full stop, is covered.’[7] Hood lives in Cheshire, and has been quoted in her books as enjoying walking and opera.
According to the IWM, it will be 'the UK's largest ever exhibition about reporting war, featuring some of the people whose words, images, voices and faces bring the story from the frontline'.