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 and facilitator of academic and creative writing. She lives in South London.
Lydia’s first book, Doctor of Love, was a biography of the Enlightenment fertility guru, James Graham, known as the Electric Doctor. Following this she published 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, which is set during the Spanish Civil War, featured on many award listings, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Branford Boase Award (Highly Commended). That Burning Summer tells the story of a Polish pilot who bails out over Romney Marsh during the Battle of Britain. Carnegie-nominated, Liberty’s Fire brings the 1871 Paris Commune vividly to life. Her adult fiction debut, Mr Peacock’s Possessions, 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.