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Kate Summerscale
About
Kate Summerscale was born in London and lived in Japan and Chile as a child. She was then educated at Parliament Hill school in London, Bedales school in Hampshire and at Oxford and Stanford universities. She worked at various newspapers and magazines until in 2005 she left her job as Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph to write The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. She has judged several literary prizes, including the Booker Prize, and in 2010 was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.
Kate Summerscale’s first book, The Queen of Whale Cay (1997), was inspired by an obituary she wrote for the Daily Telegraph — it won the Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread (now Costa) biography prize.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008) won the Samuel Johnson prize as well as the British Book Awards for both Popular Non-Fiction and Book of the Year. It was a Richard & Judy Bookclub pick and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Non-Fiction Gold Dagger in the UK and the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime in the US. Hat Trick productions adapted the story for ITV, and went on to make three fictional dramas about Jack Whicher’s investigations.
Kate’s third book, Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace (2012), was a Sunday Times bestseller, and her fourth, The Wicked Boy (2016), won the 2017 Mystery Writers of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime. The Haunting of Alma Fielding was shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and The Book of Phobias & Manias has been published in 19 languages. The Peepshow will appear on 3 October 2024.
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