About the Author

From 1980 to 1996, Robert McCrum was editor-in-chief of Faber & Faber, where he published Kazuo Ishiguro, Milan Kundera, Peter Carey, Paul Auster, Marilynne Robinson, Lorrie Moore, Adam Phillips and Hanif Kureishi. At the same time, he wrote seven novels, and co-authored the BBC TV series, The Story Of English, for which he was awarded an Emmy in 1986.