Janie Hampton is the British author of social history, biography, children’s fiction and text books. As a global health planner and activist, she worked on every continent planning reproductive health projects for governments and charities. Her career took her from living in rural villages in Africa, to meeting Queen Elizabeth II.
While raising goats, ducks and children in Shropshire in the 1970s, Janie designed and made clothes that she sold in London, Los Angeles and Rome. Her customers included musician Robert Plant and author Louisa Young.
From 1980-85 the Hampton family lived in newly-independent Zimbabwe where Janie was an agony aunt; founded a magazine for health workers; the women’s editor of The Manica Post; and ran health projects for UNICEF and the Ministry of Health, while undertaking an Open University BA degree in Human Sciences.
In 1985 the Hamptons travelled home across Africa on trucks, boats, buses and foot, which led to their book A Family Outing in Africa. Back in Britain, Janie was a producer of The Medical Programme and Focus on Africa for the BBC World Service. After gaining an MSc in International Health from the University of London, she developed the first policy on reproductive health for the British Overseas Development Administration (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office).
From 2016, Janie worked to improve global menstrual health policies and practice, and commissioned studies in schools, refugee camps and national parks which demonstrated the safety, comfort and popularity of menstrual cups. She co-founded the Menstrual Cup Coalition; and the Global Menstrual Collective.
Janie was the Olympic Correspondent for The Oldie magazine; the first Arts Council-sponsored writer-in-residence in a pub; a school governor; on an adoption & fostering panel; shortlisted for the Tesco Mum of the Year Award; trustee of a social housing charity; and a foster parent. During the 2020 Covid Lockdown, she raised the funds and organized 74 volunteers to make 2,000 sets of ‘scrubs’ for clinics, hospitals and prisons, in UK and Malawi.
Janie is a member of the Society of Authors; a Senior Associate Member of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge; and co-founder of Writers in Oxford.
For 30 years, Janie hosted over 100 lodgers and Airbnb guests who stayed from one night to seven years. Bonan from China reviewed: “Janie is an incredibly fun host and her home is a true masterpiece, full of life. It truly is a soul-cleansing experience.”
Janie is the penultimate daughter of the author Verily Anderson and the playwright Donald Anderson, and younger sister of author Rachel Anderson. She was married to psychotherapist Charles Hampton for 50 years. Now her four children are grown up, she enjoys traveling with her six grandchildren.
