Westminster, London, daughter of Nicholas Wilfrid Bagshawe and Daphne Margaret (Triggs) Bagshawe, and was raised a Roman Catholic. Her father is descended from the recusant (Catholic) Bagshawe family, of Wormhill Hall, near Buxton, Derbyshire, and of Oakes-in-Norton. She was educated at Beechwood Sacred Heart School, Tunbridge Wells, and Woldingham School, a Catholic girls' boarding school in Surrey. She read English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and was Secretary of the Oxford Union. She has a brother and two sisters, one of whom, Tilly Bagshawe, is a freelance journalist and author. As writer Mensch won a 'Young Poet of the Year' award in 1989, at the age of 18. Following a six-month internship at MTV Europe, she worked as a press officer with EMI Records and then as a marketing official for Sony Music. She went on to a long career writing novels in the chick lit fiction genre, publishing seventeen works in all – fifteen of which have appeared under her maiden name. They sold a total of over two million copies. Her first novel, Career Girls, was published in 1995. Her sister Tilly has also published novels of that type. Mensch is an outspoken advocate of the genre, and has stated that it encourages girls to be ambitious. Before her run for parliament, she said: "There was so much sex in the first novel, I thought, there is no way I am ever going to be an MP. How will I get past the blue rinse brigade?" Reflecting further on her books, she stated: "All of them feature feminist heroines making it on their own. I simply couldn't write about some drippy Cinderella because I don't admire those women." Political career Mensch joined the Conservative Party when she was 14; her parents supported the party. Subsequently, in 1996, she switched to the Labour Party, saying she believed Tony Blair to be "socially liberal but an economic Tory". By 1997, she returned to the Conservatives, helping her mother Daphne win a seat on East Sussex County Council from the Liberal Democrats; and campaigned in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2001, Mensch co-founded the Oxonian Society, later renamed the Hudson Union Society, with Joseph Pascal and Princess Badiya bint El Hassan of Jordan. Conservative party leader David Cameron placed Mensch on his "A-List" of Conservative candidates in 2006. In October 2006, she was selected to stand