Rebecca Gowers

Rebecca Gowers has worked as a freelance journalist and reviewer for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, the Independent and the Spectator. She has written two novels, When to Walk and The Twisted Heart, both longlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). She became the fourth editor to revise Plain Words, the classic usage guide by her great-grandfather Sir Ernest Gowers, and afterwards wrote her own satirical companion volume, Horrible Words, both published by Penguin.

She has also written two works of biographical non-fiction inspired by family archive materials, each focussed on a Victorian murder case that happened to involve one of her forebears. The first, The Swamp of Death, was shortlisted in 2004 for a Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger award, and was serialised on Radio 4; the second, The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns and his Pitiless Killing by the Photographer Eadweard Muybridge, was shortlisted in 2020 for a Historical Writers’ Association Golden Crown award. She recently appeared in the feature documentary Exposing Muybridge with Gary Oldman. Rebecca is represented by United Agents.