Nigel Farndale was born in Ripon, North Yorkshire, in 1964. He is the author of six books, including The Blasphemer (shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award) and Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce (a biography shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize). His latest novel is The Road Between Us.

As a journalist he has interviewed a host of celebrities and public figures from Mick Jagger, Woody Allen, the Dalai Lama and Henry Kissinger to Elton John, Prince Charles, Hillary Clinton, Paul McCartney, George Best, and Stephen Hawking.

He writes for various newspapers and magazines, including The Observer, FT, Spectator and Country Life, and has won a British Press Award for his interviews in the Sunday Telegraph.

His appearances on Radio 4 have included Loose Ends, Broadcasting House and Between Ourselves, a programme in which he and Lynn Barber compared notes on the art of the celebrity interview.

Before becoming a writer, Farndale read philosophy for a Master’s degree at Durham University.

He is the son of a sheep and dairy farmer from Wensleydale, and worked as a farmer there himself for a few years. He now lives on the Hampshire-Sussex border with his wife Mary and their three children.