Books

At the Existentialist Cafe: freedom, being, and apricot cocktails (2016) tells the story of twentieth-century existentialism, exploring the lives and ideas of its creators and asking what it might still have to say to us today.  READ MORE!

How to Live: a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (2010) is an unorthodox biography of the  sixteenth-century philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in the U.S. and the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction in the U.K., and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award.  READ MORE!

The English Dane (2005) explores the life of nineteenth-century sailor,  revolutionary and spy Jorgen Jorgenson, and the story of his 1809 revolution in Iceland.  READ MORE!

The Smart (2001) is a real-life courtroom drama, revolving around the eighteenth-century  courtesan and swindler Margaret Caroline Rudd and her accomplices, the twins Daniel and Robert Perreau. READ MORE!