Popular Authors - Profiles, Biographies & Bibliographies

Ian McEwan - Author, General Fiction

Ian McEwan was born on 21st June 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. His father was an arm officer and hence Ian spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany, and North Africa, wherever his father was posted. He returned to England to take a degree in English at Sussex University and then became the first student on a MA Creative Writing course established at the University of East Anglia by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. more..

Diana Gabaldon - Author, General Fiction

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award winning international best-selling Outlander novels, all featuring Claire and Jamie Fraser, who must be amongst the most inspiring heroine and hero ever created by the ‘pen’. Although American by birth, Diana has become fascinated by the history of Scotland, England, France and the USA in the mid-18th century when the struggles that would determine the shape of the modern world were taking place. more..

David Mitchell - Author, General Fiction

David Mitchell was born in Southport in 1969, and grew up in Malvern, Worcestershire. He gained a degree in English and American Literature at the University of Kent, followed by a MA in Comparative Literature. He lived in Sicily for a year before moving to Hiroshima, Japan, where for eight years he taught English to technical students, before returning to England. more..

Kate Atkinson - Author, General Fiction

Kate Atkinson was born in York in 1951 and studied English Literature at Dundee University. After graduating in 1974, Kate researched a postgraduate doctorate on American Literature and later taught at Dundee. She began writing short stories in 1981, which extended to writing for women’s magazines after winning the 1986 Woman’s Own short story competition. more..

Victoria Hislop - Author, General Fiction

Victoria Hislop was born in Kent and grew up in Tonbridge. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and later worked in book publishing and then public relations. When she became a mother in 1990, it was the catalyst for a change of career and she began working as a freelance journalist, specialising in features on parenting and education. more..

Joe Abercrombie - Author, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Joe Abercrombie was born in Lancaster, England, on 31st December 1974. He attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School, where much of his time was spent playing computer games, rolling dice, and drawing maps of non-existent places (a sign of things to come!). He then studied Psychology at Manchester University, where his passion for computer games continued. more..

Philip Pullman - Author, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before his family put down roots in North Wales where he received his secondary education. He studied English at Oxford University, from whence he graduated in 1968 and became a teacher in middle schools. During this period he wrote plays on which some of his later novels were based. more..

Peter F. Hamilton - Author, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland on 2nd March 1960. He didn’t go to university and in an interview said: “I did science up to age 18, I stopped doing English, English literature, writing at 16, I just wasn’t interested in those days.” He’s not alone I suspect! more..

Ian Rankin - Author, Crime & Thrillers

Ian Rankin was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, graduated from the University of Edinburgh, and then spent the next three years writing novels under the guise of working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. At least he was producing it if not studying it! His first Rebus novel, ‘Knots & Crosses’ was published in 1987, and since then the Rebus books have become so popular that they have been translated into 22 languages and are bestsellers across the globe. more..

Mark Billingham - Author, Crime & Thrillers

Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel, “Sleepyhead” was published in 2001. This was the start of a series of novels featuring Tom Thorne, a London-based detective, and was an instant bestseller in the UK. more..

Simon Kernick - Author, Crime & Thrillers

Simon Kernick was born in 1966 in Slough, England. After leaving school in the mid 1980s he worked in a variety of jobs and spent several years living and travelling in Canada and the USA before returning to England via Australia and the Far East to complete his studies. He graduated from Brighton Polytechnic in 1991 with a degree in Humanities and eventually found work in London as a computer software salesman, in which profession he stayed for the rest of the ‘90s despite feeling there was more to life. more..