Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell was born in Bournemouth on the English south coast, but spent most of her childhood in Sydney, Australia, after several years travelling the hippie trail through Asia with her parents. Returning to Britain, she studied philosophy at the University of Essex and worked as a curator of early printed books at London’s Wellcome Library for ten years before devoting herself to full-time writing in 2002. She now lives mostly in London, and teaches Creative Writing at Kellogg College, Oxford.

Her four books are all biographical, and the most recent two, 'How to Live: a life of Montaigne' and 'At the Existentialist Cafe', also explore philosophical ideas. 'How to Live' won the Duff Cooper Prize and the U.S. National Book Critics' Circle Award for Biography, and 'At the Existentialist Cafe' was chosen in 2016 as one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year.