Bill Bryson is a bestselling American-British author known for his witty and accessible nonfiction books spanning travel, science, and language. He rose to prominence with Notes from a Small Island (1…
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 – 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional d…
In 1934, scientist Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. After earning bachelor and master's degrees at Cornell, Sagan earned a double doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1960. He became profess…
Stephen John Fry is an English comedian, writer, actor, humourist, novelist, poet, columnist, filmmaker, television personality and technophile. As one half of the Fry and Laurie double act with his c…
Peter Harmer Lovesey, also known by his pen name Peter Lear, was a British writer of historical and contemporary detective novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Crib…
Martin Edwards has been described by Richard Osman as ‘a true master of British crime writing.’ He has published twenty-three novels, which include the eight Lake District Mysteries, one of which was …
Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, a…
Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan, known as Spike, was a comedian, writer and musician. He was of Irish descent, but spent most of his childhood in India and lived most of his later life in England, …
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC, formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1951 until 2001, and was a Cabinet Minister unde…
Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Hi…
Dent was educated at the Marist Convent in Ascot, an independent Roman Catholic day school. She went on to Somerville College, Oxford for her B.A. in modern languages, then to Princeton University for…
Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about …
S.J. Parris began reviewing books for national newspapers while she was reading English literature at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduating, she went on t…
Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. Since 1998 he has been the film critic of the Independent. His debut novel The Rescue Man won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. His second novel Ha…
Sally Smith spent all her working life as a barrister and later King's Counsel in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of the famous Edwardian barrister, Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, she retire…
