Amanda J. Thomas is an author, linguist and historian with a particular interest in social and medical history. Her books include 'Cholera - The Victorian Plague' (Pen & Sword History, 2015), 'The Lambeth Cholera Outbreak of 1848-1849: The Setting, Causes, Course and Aftermath of an Epidemic in London' (McFarland, 2009); she also contributed to Dr. Andrew Hann's 'The Medway Valley a Kent Landscape Transformed' (Victoria County History, Phillimore, 2009). Amanda's biographies of Alderman William Brenchley, JP and his daughter, the agricultural botanist Dr. Winifred Brenchley, OBE have been included in John D Beasley's, 'Peckham and Nunhead Biographical Dictionary' and are deposited at Southwark Local History Library, London, The Gilbert Library, Rothamsted Research, Hertfordshire, and the archives of Dulwich Hamlet Junior School and James Allen's Girls' School, London. Broadcast work includes 'The Flying Archaeologist' (BBC4, 2012), 'Who Do You Think You Are?' (Wall to Wall Media/BBC1, 2012-13), and 'The One Show' (2016). Amanda is Editor of the historical journal, 'The Clock Tower', for The Friends of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, and Editorial Consultant to 'Harpendia' magazine.
Pictured (right) is the heritage plaque dedicated to the victims of the Lambeth 1848-9 cholera epidemic which Amanda was commissioned to write by Lambeth Council and erected on London's South Bank in 2011.
Amanda lives in Hertfordshire, but was born in Chatham, Kent and has dual British/Australian nationality. She graduated with a degree in Italian from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and it was there and at the Università degli Studi di Torino, (where she spent an academic year) that she developed a keen interest in glottology and the history of Indo-European languages. Following university, Amanda wrote for a wide range of consumer and women's magazines in London. She then moved into public relations, specialising in the television and music sectors for organisations such as The Walt Disney Company and Television New Zealand; she also worked on the launch of satellite television in Europe.
Amanda is a member of the following organisations: The Society of Women Writers and Journalists, (www.swwj.co.uk/members.html), The Historical Novel Society, The Brentwood Writers' Circle, The Council for British Archaeology, the Kent Archaeological Society, the Friends of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, the City of Rochester Society, the Kent, North West Kent and Glamorgan Family History Societies, the Castlemaine Historical Society (Victoria, Australia), and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
