Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts …
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. D…
Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.
Ian Don Marter was born at Alcock Hospital in Keresley, near Coventry, on the 28th of October 1944. His father, Donald Herbert, was an RAF sergeant and electrician by trade, and his mother was Helen, …
Simon Garfield is a British journalist and non-fiction author. He was educated at the independent University College School in Hampstead, London, and the London School of Economics, where he was the E…
Alan Davies is an English stand-up comedian, writer and actor. He has played the title role in the BBC mystery drama series Jonathan Creek since 1997, and has been the only permanent panellist on the …
David Hepworth is a music journalist, writer, and publishing industry analyst who has launched several successful British magazines, including Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and The Word, among many others. He p…
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…
Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was an Emmy-, Golden Globe-, BAFTA- and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning English film, television and stage actor. He was perhaps best known to American film audiences for…
Michael Mosley was a British television journalist, producer, and presenter who worked for the BBC (amongst other broadcasters) from 1985 until his death in 2024. He was probably best known as a prese…
Nick Harkaway was born in Cornwall, UK in 1972. He is possessed of two explosively exciting eyebrows, which exert an almost hypnotic attraction over small children, dogs, and - thankfully - one ludicr…
Mick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of six books in the Slough House series as well as a mystery series set in Oxford featuring…
William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
Richard Ellef Ayoade is a British comedian, film director, screenwriter, television presenter, actor, and author best known for his role as the socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss in Channel 4…
Rory Carroll (b. 1972) is a journalist who started his career in Northern Ireland. As a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, he reported from the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Latin American,…
Jonny Sweet started out winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009, and in the intervening years, his work has been varied and exceptional. His current projects include his first fea…
Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, and quite a lot more. An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and w…
Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Sam Wyndham series of crime novels set in Raj era India. His debut, A Rising Man, won the CWA Endeavour Dagger for best historical crime novel of …
