Katherine Rundell was born in 1987 and grew up in London, Southern Africa and Brussels. She graduated with a double first in English from St Catherine's College, Oxford, worked for a brief stint on the South Bank Show and in 2008 was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her first book was born of her love of Zimbabwe and her own, slightly feral, childhood there. She is currently writing a second novel alongside academic work on the letters of John Donne.