Journalist. Born in Hertfordshire (England), Reid came to Scotland to read English Language and Literature at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1980. She joined the Scotsman, and went on to senior editorial posts with that newspaper, the Sunday Mail and the Herald. In 2007 she became a columnist for The Times. Three years later she broke her neck as the result of a fall while riding her horse and was paralysed from the shoulders down. Reid spent twelve months in the Scottish National Spinal Injuries Unit in the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, described in her book The World I Fell Out Of (2019), which won a won the Saltire Non Fiction Book of the Year Award. She went on to chart her life in the Spinal Column in The Times.
Reid helped actor Gregor Fisher research and write his autobiography The Boy from Nowhere (2015).
Other awards have included Scottish Journalist of the Year and Columnist of the Year in 2010, UK Columnist of the Year (2011) and the Edgar Wallace Award for Journalism (2014). In 2015, she was awarded an MBE for services to journalism and disabled people. She received an honorary degree from the University of Stirling (2014).
Reid lives with her husband in a farmhouse near Gartmore (Stirlingshire).
