Maureen Lipman was born in Kingston upon Hull on 10th May 1946, and attended Newland High School for Girls, and later the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Her stage debut was in The Knack at the Palace Theatre in Watford, and she made an early film appearance in Up the Junction. Her first major television role was in the situation comedy Agony in 1979. On stage, she starred as Joyce Grenfell in Re:Joyce, and more recently in Oklahoma!. In 2002, she played the mother of the title character in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. Lipman married the dramatist Jack Rosenthal in 1973, and has featured in many of his television series and plays, including Eskimo Day, Cold Enough for Snow, and About Face.

Lipman also wrote a monthly column for Good Housekeeping for more than ten years, and a weekly column in The Guardian. From these columns developed several autobiographical books, including How was it for you? and You can read me like a book.

Following Jack Rosenthal’s death in 2004, she completed his autobiography By Jack Rosenthal, and played herself in the radio adaptation of the book by her daughter Amy in 2006.