Robert Winder

Robert Winder has been Literary Editor of the Independent, Culture Editor of the Independent on Sunday and Deputy Editor of Granta. At the Independent he wrote a weekly book review and ran the newspaper’s Award for Foreign Fiction.

Prior to that he was Sports Editor of the Tehran Journal (an English-language daily) and reporter for Euromoney Magazine. He chairs the annual MCC/Cricket Society Book Award, is a Speaker for Schools, and has made regular contributions to a range of publications including The Guardian, New Statesman and Condé Nast Traveller.

His books embrace fiction, history and sport. The idea behind Three Rivers came during trips to the Alps, when he noticed that the three great river systems of Western Europe all started in the same heights. The Final Act of William Shakespeare, meanwhile, imagines the playwright conjuring a new history play, and includes the five-act work-in-progress in blank verse. The Last Wolf explores the history of England by tracing the influence of its natural ingredients: water, grass, wool and coal.

Bloody Foreigners, a panoramic history of immigration to Britain, led to his becoming a founder trustee of the Migration Museum, which aims to give Britain its first major museum on this important and ever-pressing subject.

He is married with two sons and lives in London.