About me

A former broadcast journalist and special adviser to the prime minister, since leaving politics I’ve written more than 90 books for children and adults, for publishers including Bloomsbury, OUP and Little Brown; speeches for CEOs and politicians from the Trade Secretary to the Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority; and articles for newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, Red and The Amorist. I hold a doctorate in adolescent identity and YA literature, and am an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol.

I’m a winner of the Fantastic Book Award and the Surrey Book Award, have been shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, the Booktrust Best Book award, the Little Rebels Award, the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year, the Hearst Big Book Awards, and Queen of Teen among many others, and nominated for the Carnegie Medal six times: for Everybody Hurts, No Man’s Land, A Calamity of Mannerings, My Teeth in Your Heart, Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of Yes, and for Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated BBC drama series. The Worst Class in the World in Danger was a World Book Day book for 2002 and a Sunday Times no 1. bestseller. I’ve also worked with Sir Chris Hoy on the bestselling Flying Fergus series, and ghost-written Angry Birds under another name.

I like London, New York, Essex, tea, cake, Marmite, mint imperials, prom dresses, pubs, that bit in the West Wing where Donna tells Josh she wouldn’t stop for a red light if he was in an accident, junk shops, crisps, Cornwall, St Custard’s, Portuguese custard tarts, political geeks, pin-up swimsuits, the Regency, high heels, horses, old songs, my Grandma’s fur coat, vinyl, liner notes, the smell of old books, the feel of a velveteen monkey, Guinness, quiffs, putting my hand in a bin of chicken feed, the 1950s, burlesque, automata, fiddles, flaneuring, gigs in fields on warm summer nights, Bath, the bath.