Daniel Chapman was born and raised in Leeds, but found his nerdish fervour for Leeds United during an enforced exile, returning to the city and a season ticket as soon as he could.
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…
Marisha Pessl grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, her debut novel, was a bestseller in both hardcover and paperback. It won the 20…
Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien…
Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. …
John Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town in Essex. He recalled the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of h…
Sir Michael Edward Palin, KCMG, CBE, FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel doc…
Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. He served briefly as an officer in the British Army (the Black Watch), studied history and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and then jo…
Francis Paul Wilson is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is a…
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…
In 2010, Justin Cronin’s The Passage was a phenomenon. The unforgettable tale that critics and readers compared to the novels of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, and Margaret Atwood be…
Marc Morris, PhD, is an historian and broadcaster, specializing in the Middle Ages. An expert on medieval monarchy and aristocracy, Marc has written numerous articles for History Today, BBC History Ma…
Robert Renwick Mortimer is an English comedian, podcast presenter and actor. He is known for his work with Vic Reeves as part of their Vic and Bob comedy double act, and more recently the Mortimer & W…
Sir Christopher Andrew Hoy is a former track cyclist and racing driver from Scotland who represented Great Britain at the Olympic and World Championships and Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.
I figured this bio was looking a little cobwebby, so here to update it a bit (January 2026). What's changed in the decade since I wrote my initial bio? Mmmm, not a lot. I still enjoy b…
Caitlin Starling is the nationally bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence, the Bram Stoker-nominated The Luminous Dead, and Last To Leave The Room. Her upcoming novels The Starving Saints an…
David McCloskey is the author of the novels Damascus Station, Moscow X, The Seventh Floor, and The Persian, and is cohost of the podcast The Rest Is Classified. A former CIA analyst, he worked at Lang…
