Sarah Mary Malet Bradford (née Hayes; born 3 September 1938^[1]) is an English author who is best known for her royal biographies.

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. (September 2012)

Bradford was born in Bournemouth in 1938, the daughter of Brigadier Hilary Anthony Hayes DSO OBE.^[2][3] She was educated at St Mary's School, Shaftesbury, Dorset. She won a State scholarship to Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, but met Anthony Bradford, a real estate developer, at Oxford, and abandoned her degree to marry him.^[3] The couple lived in Barbados, Lisbon, and Sardinia; they had two children, but divorced.

Sarah Bradford then worked for the manuscript department of the auctioneer Christie's in London, where she met her second husband, William Maxwell David Ward; the two married in 1976.

She began her career as a writer with her first book, The Englishman's Wine, written while she lived in Portugal. She has now published more than a dozen major works. Her husband became 8th Viscount Bangor in 1993.^[3] She is fluent in four languages^{[which?][citation needed]} and has travelled extensively.^[vague] The couple live in London. Bradford was interviewed in connection with the 1994 edition of the PBS video The Windsors: A Royal Family and with the 2007 BBC documentary Gladstone and Disraeli (presented by Huw Edwards), and assisted with the screenwriting for The Borgias, a 2011 television series. In 2012, she was working on a biography of Queen Victoria.^[3]

Her books have been translated into at least ten languages.^[4]