The Biographers’ Club
The Biographers’ Club, founded in 1997, is committed to supporting, promoting and connecting biographers at all levels. It administers three prestigious annual prizes. Membership gives you access to Club talks, prize-givings and other networking opportunities, as well as listing on our website.
Find out more about The Biographers’ Club membership options, annual prizes and events calendar. Membership will also gain you access to our exclusive database of articles, news and latest in biography. Connect with us and become a part of a leading network of literacy specialists in biography.
NEXT EVENT
Clare Mulley at Hatchards
Clare Mulley will be in conversation about her highly acclaimed new book Agent Zo with biographer Anne Sebba, author of Ethel Rosenberg, Les Parisiennes and That Woman.
AGENT ZO tells the incredible story of courageous resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, also known as Zo. During the Second World War, Zo was the only woman to reach London as emissary of the Polish Home Army command, before becoming the only female member of the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the ’Silent Unseen’. Following secret training in the British countryside, she also became the only woman to be parachuted back behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo who arrested her entire family, she took a key role in the Warsaw Uprising, and in the liberation of her country.
6.30pm, Thursday12 September, Hatchards Piccadilly. For further details, including how to book, click here.
Prizes
The Biographers’ Club awards three annual prizes:
The Hatchards & Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize
The Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize
Exceptional Contribution to Biography Award
Meet the Committee
The committee, who are responsible for the administration of the Club and for organising its events, is a group of dedicated volunteers who have extensive experience in the world of publishing and writing. They include bestselling biographers, journalists, and festival organisers.
Is a historian, biographer, author, broadcaster, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham. She has run the university’s MA course in Biography since establishing it in 1996. Jane won the Duff Cooper Prize in 2002 for The Architect and his Wife, a biography of her great-grandfather Edwin Lutyens. Other books include The Young Disraeli and The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, ed. with Clayre Percy. She published the bestselling Bertie: A Life of Edward VII in 2012, followed by Victoria: Queen, Matriarch, Empress in the Penguin Monarchs Series. She is currently working on a life of King George V and Queen Mary.
Founded the Travel Bookshop of the film Notting Hill fame in 1979 and ran it for 25 years. During that time, when she had reliable staff, she travelled and wrote articles for The Financial Times, The Times, the Guardian, Departures, Country Life, the Mail on Sunday and the Independent. She has also published, among other books, her memoir Halfway to Venus. She now travels, writes and paints.
Spent many years in publishing, and now works as writer, curator and critic. She has co-authored The New Aldeburgh Anthology; David Jones: Vision and Memory, and Julian Trevelyan: The Artist and his World. Her family memoir The Quality of Love is published in May 2024 by Duckworth.
Is a former editor of the Bookseller, and joint editor of book industry newsletter BookBrunch. He is the author of Don’t Sweat the Aubergine: What Works in the Kitchen and Why; Eclipse: The Story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse That Changed Racing; a memoir, Things I Am Ashamed Of; and The Booker and the Best: Discrimination in the Book World.
Is a biographer and social historian, who has often appeared on television, for which two of her books have been made into documentaries. Many have been best-sellers; among them are The Viceroy’s Daughters, The Fishing Fleet, Snowdon: The Biography, The Husband Hunters and Chanel’s Riviera: Life, Love and the Struggle for Survival on the Cote d’Azur, 1930-44. Anne has worked for the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, and currently reviews for the Daily Telegraph.
s founder and director of the Boswell Book Festival, the only festival dedicated to biography and memoir, named in honour of James Boswell and now a major cultural attraction in Scotland. Previously, Caroline had a long career in publishing working for André Deutsch and John Murray during which she commissioned a wide range of biography and memoir.
Is former Literary Editor of the Daily Mail.
President and Founder
Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his Masters and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and former visiting fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, he has run his own literary agency since 1988.
A trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information and President of The Biographers Club, he has written for the Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator and Guardian . His books include lives of the writer John Buchan, the spy Guy Burgess. (which won the St Ermin’s Hotel Intelligence Book Prize) and The Mountbatten: Their Lives and Loves.