
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst was a Booker Prize judge in 2013 when Eleanor Catton won for 'The Luminaries'. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College.
His books include Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. He is also the author of The Turning Point: A Year That Changed Dickens and the World. He writes regularly on books and film for the Times, Spectator, Guardian, and TLS; other essays and reviews have appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, Literary Review, Prospect, and Vogue. In the past he has worked as a consultant on BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre (2006), Emma (2009), and Great Expectations (2011); in 2015-16 he worked on the 20-part BBC1/Red Planet series ‘Dickensian’, and in 2019 he was an advisor on the hit Netflix feature film, Enola Holmes.
By Ruth Ozeki
By Colm Tóibín
Winner The Booker Prize 2013