Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Costa Biography Award and the Political Book Awards Political Biography of the Year. Her previous books are the acclaimed cultural histories Cleopatra (1990) and Heroes (2004). Cleopatra won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award. In 2016, she published her debut novel Peculiar Ground, which was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. She lives in London.