About
Dr Lydia Syson has worked with words and stories for most of her adult life, as a BBC World Service radio producer, as a cultural historian and as a teacher of academic and creative writing. She lives in South London.
Lydia’s first book, Doctor of Love (2008), was a biography of the Enlightenment fertility guru, James Graham, known as the Electric Doctor. Following this she wrote three critically acclaimed historical novels for young adults, all inspired to some degree by the radical politics of earlier generations of her family. A World Between Us (2012), set in the Spanish Civil War, the Highly Commended title in the 2013 Branford Boase first novel award was longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize among others. That Burning Summer (2013) tells the story of a Polish pilot who bails out over Romney Marsh during the Battle of Britain. Carnegie-nominated, Liberty’s Fire (2015) brings the 1871 Paris Commune vividly to life. Her adult fiction debut, Mr Peacock’s Possessions (2018), a neo-Victorian Robinsonade set on a remote island in the Pacific between New Zealand and Tonga, was a Book of the Year in The Times and The Sunday Times.
Lydia is represented by Ivan Mulcahy at International Creative Agency. Email him via ICA’s assistant literary agent, Sidney Jones.
Listen to Lydia’s podcasts about her writing life for the Royal Literary Fund.