Philip Eade

Philip Eade is the author of three biographies characterised by their lucid readability, humour and narrative drive. Born in Shropshire, he read History at Bristol University and later qualified as a barrister. He abandoned his legal career soon after pupillage to write for Euromoney magazine on the emerging economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the former Soviet Union, at the same time contributing features to Marie Claire, the BBC World Service and the Daily Telegraph.

After several years as a freelance journalist he joined the staff of the Telegraph, working on its obituaries desk, initially under the editorship of Hugh Massingberd. One of the pieces he wrote led to his first book, Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters (2007), about the wife of the last White Rajah of Sarawak, the proposal for which was runner-up for the Biographer’s Club prize. This was followed by Young Prince Philip (2011), which became a Sunday Times bestseller, and Evelyn Waugh: a life revisited (2016), which was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, and a Guardian, Sunday Times and Financial Times book of the year.

He spent a year after university teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Barcelona and contributed to Fodor’s guidebooks to Spain, Colombia and Costa Rica. He now lives in west London with his wife, the interior designer Rita Konig, and their young daughter Margot, and spends periodic weekends in a drafty cottage in the Berwyn hills of North Wales.