Fran Warde has worked all over the globe, from mountains to high seas and beach barbecues, all in the pursuit of culinary perfection. Raised in the rural West Country and an enthusiastic cook as a child, she studied hotel and catering management and after an eighteen-month stint at The Café Royale, headed first to the mountains and then onto Australia. Whilst there, she connected with the Australian approach to cookery and fresh ingredients, even spending time on a prawn trawler to learn all there was to be known about fish and seafood. She returned to England and set up a restaurant in London, later moving into catering. She has also set up her own successful cookery school.

She is the co-author, with bestselling novelist Joanne Harris, of a number of books including the award-winning The French Kitchen.  She has also co-written two cookbooks with Tim Wilson, owner of The Ginger Pig. Fran has written extensively for food magazines, among them BBC Good Food, the Saturday Times Magazine and Waitrose Food Illustrated, and is the former food editor of Red magazine.