Nicolette Jones

Nicolette Jones is a writer, journalist and occasional broadcaster who has also written about children’s books for the Sunday Times for many years.

Her book about the Victorian philanthropist Samuel Plimsoll and his campaign on behalf of sailors, The Plimsoll Sensation (Little, Brown/Abacus), was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, received widespread critical acclaim, and won maritime literature prizes in the UK and USA.

She has written two books about the author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, the latest of which is in The Illustrators series (Thames & Hudson). Her most recent books include The American Art Tapes (Tate), an edited selection of her father’s recordings of conversations with US artists 1965-6 (also the subject of a BBC Four radio programme); Inspire Me! (Nosy Crow), a collection for young people of utterances from great minds; and an anthology: The Velveteen Rabbit and Other Classic Children’s Stories (Macmillan Collector’s Library).

She has been a frequent judge of book prizes, from the Women’s Prize to children’s book awards, and regularly chairs public book events. She has a particular interest in picturebooks, and posts a #NewIllustrationoftheDay daily on Bluesky and Instagram. 

In 2022 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

Originally from Leeds, she was a scholar at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She spent a year as Henry Fellow in the graduate school of English at Yale University. She has two grown-up children and lives with her husband in London.

For more information, see www.nicolettejones.com. 

Nicolette Jones is an award-winning writer and critic who has written non-fiction for adults and innumerable newspaper articles, and compiled anthologies for young people. For more than two decades she has reviewed the children’s books for The Sunday Times, and is experienced at judging book prizes (from the Women’s Prize to the Empathy Lab selection) and at programming and chairing public events for both young people and adults. Her own track record of academic writing includes studying at Oxford, and on a graduate fellowship at Yale, and she has helped undergraduates and graduates with their writing as a RLF Fellow at University College London and King’s College London.