Dr Lydia Syson brings history to life in nuanced fiction and non-fiction which works on many levels: her books are rewarding for readers new to her varied themes, yet also illuminating for those with deeper knowledge. She’s worked with words and stories all her life, spending her early career as a BBC World Service radio producer before completing a PhD about Timbuktu in the European cultural imagination. Her much cited biography of Britain’s first fertility guru, Doctor of Love: James Graham and his Celestial Bed, was followed by three critically acclaimed historical novels for young adults published by Hot Key Books: A World Between Us, That Burning Summer and Liberty’s Fire. Telling stories about British involvement in the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Britain, and the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871, all were loosely inspired by her own family’s radical history. Her adult fiction debut, Mr Peacock’s Possessions, is a neo-Victorian Robinsonade which unfolds on a remote volcanic island in nineteenth-century Oceania. Lydia is a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow and also a best-selling and award-winning ghost writer. She grew up in Botswana and London, where she still lives, and has four adult children. She’s currently writing a work of biofiction set in pre-war France.