Rory MacLean

Rory MacLean is one of Britain’s most expressive and adventurous nonfiction writers. His books – which have been translated into a dozen languages — include UK top tens Stalin’s Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: imagine a city, ‘the most extraordinary work of history I’ve ever read’ according to the Washington Post which named it a book of the year. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize.

In his humanitarian work, Rory has written about the missing civilians of the Yugoslav Wars for the International Committee of the Red Cross, on divided Cyprus for the UN’s Committee on Missing Persons and on North Korea for the British Council. In addition he has blogged a quarter of a million words for the Goethe Institut and made over fifty BBC radio programmes. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former member of the Executive Committee of EnglishPEN.

According to the late John Fowles, Rory’s work ‘marvellously explains why literature still lives’. His fourteenth book, Pravda Ha Ha: true travels to the end of Europe, marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. His next project will spring from his year working with David Bowie in the late nineteen-seventies.