Agent

I’m with the Andrew Lowney Literary Agency. Here’s some information from their website: ‘The Agency was founded in 1988 and is now one of the UK’s leading boutique literary agencies with some two hundred non-fiction and fiction authors and is actively building its fiction list through new agent David Haviland. Books represented have included: The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English: The Oxford Classical Dictionary; The Penguin Companion to the European Union; Norma Major’s history of Chequers; the memoirs of Sir John Mills, Alan Whicker, Gloria Hunniford, David Hasselhoff, Emily Lloyd, Kerry Katona and Patrick MacNee; the best-selling fostering series by Cathy Glass and Casey Watson; Sam Faiers’ Living Life the Essex Way; Daniel Tammet’s international best-seller Born on a Blue Day; Laurence Gardner’s The Magdalene Legacy and The Shadow of Solomon, the literary estates of Joyce Cary and Julian MacLaren-Ross; the historians Juliet Barker, Roger Crowley, Tom Devine, Robert Hutchinson, Sean McMeekin, Linda Porter, Geoff Roberts ,Desmond Seward, David Stafford and Christian Wolmar; the wine writer Michael Schuster; crime writers, such as Mei Trow and David Roberts, and thriller writers such as Duncan Falconer.’

My profile page can be found here. I have published one biography and am working on another non-fiction book.

‘Wilde’s Women’ is a group biography of the women who impacted on the life and work of Oscar Wilde. The whole world is fascinated by Oscar Wilde, yet his life is constantly defined in terms of his relationships with men and this imbalance is rarely challenged. The rise of the ‘New Woman’ movement coincided with Wilde’s popularity and a group of free-thinking, influential and accomplished women coalesced around him. The first of these was his delightfully eccentric and accomplished mother, Jane. When he toured America Oscar was often introduced as her son. They shared tragedy when his sister Isola died in childhood. Oscar was distraught and kept a lock of her hair for the remainder of his life. His friendships and collaborations with Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, Louise Jopling and Ellen Terry had a profound effect on his work. Women funded, informed and inspired his writing, and gave him access to vital publicity. He based some of his most memorable characters on them, reflecting their language, ideas and lives in his deadly serious social comedies. As radical editor of The Woman’s World, Wilde commissioned articles concerned ‘not merely with what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel’. Long before he turned his attention to men, Oscar loved a series of beautiful women. Florence Balcombe abandoned him for Bram Stoker but his wife Constance, an influential and accomplished woman, showed remarkable fortitude and loyalty when faced with his intolerable infidelity. Wilde’s Women was published by Duckworth Overlook on 16 October 2015. More information here.

‘A Want of Honour’ is a biography of Harriet Shelley, tragic first wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. At fifteen Harriet Westbrook, the strikingly pretty and unworldly daughter of an exceptionally wealthy man, could look forward to making an advantageous marriage and enjoying a comfortable if conventional life. Instead she had the misfortune to encounter Percy Bysshe Shelley. Within months the controversial and precociously talented young poet, who regarded marriage as a ‘most despotic, most unrequired fetter’, had persuaded Harriet to elope with him to Scotland. Although theirs was a chaotic marriage, Harriet embraced her impoverished, itinerant existence with unfailing good humour. Her loyalty to her husband never wavered as he took up one hopeless cause after another and invited other women to share their home in pursuit of his madcap ambition to establish a utopian commune built on free love. Ultimately he betrayed her cruelly and his followers portrayed her as money grabbing, immoral and his intellectual inferior. The failure of her marriage was devastating for Harriet but worse times were to follow. More information here.