Ian Kelly

I am a dramatist and actor as well as historical biographer - so I spend a lot of time imaginatively in the past, and in archives and libraries, but also on stage. Pretty much everything I have written as non-fiction has then had a life on the stage or screen - COOKING FOR KINGS became an Off Broadway play and is in development as a TV series, BEAU BRUMMELL became a TV film, MR FOOTE's OTHER LEG the biography became a West End play of the same name, and CASANOVA has just been adapted as a ballet, at Sadlers Wells in London most recently. Current works include a new book about Shakespeare, and screenplays about Robert Burns and about Handel's Messiah, amongst other adventures!

I grew up in Philadelphia, USA, and then in the South West of England and then Merseyside. I am a graduate of Cambridge (Trinity Hall, reading History) and of UCLA's film school and now live with my partner, two children and assorted dogs, cats and chickens in Suffolk and London and if we are lucky in LA and New York...actually, on reflection, the animals stay in Suffolk...