‘I wanted to write something that tried to do justice to the ordinary strangeness of our lives in time’
Francis Spufford
- Born
Francis Spufford is the author of five highly praised works of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either ‘bizarre’ or ‘brilliant’, and usually as both
His debut novel Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London and lives near Cambridge.
I wanted to write something that tried to do justice to the ordinary strangeness of our lives in time
All nominated books
Francis Spufford’s ingenious and miraculously tender novel reimagines the lives of five London children killed in a rocket attack in World War Two
Features
- Interview
Q&As with the 2021 nominated authors
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