Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh and studied Law and French at Edinburgh University, then Theatre in Kracow with Tadeusz Kantor. She ran a theatre company, writing and producing plays in Berlin, Bonn, Dublin, Rotterdam and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

She has written for the Scotsman, Independent, Guardian and Time Out and lives in Scotland with her husband and three children. She is the great-great-niece of C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Hence her debut work, Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, published by Chatto & Windus in 2015.