Edward Brooke-Hitching is the author of the acclaimed bestselling Simon and Schuster titles The Devil’s Atlas (2021), The Madman’s Library (Sunday Times Literature Book of the Year 2020), The Sky Atlas (2019), The Golden Atlas (2018), The Phantom Atlas (2016), and Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports (2015). A writer for the hit BBC television programme QI and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he has appeared on TV and radio programmes including Start the Week with Andrew Marr, the BBC Radio 2 Arts Show with Jonathan Ross, NPR, BBC 6 Music with Cerys Matthews and BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity. His writings on eccentric history have featured in the Guardian, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Literary Review, the Spectator, the Economist, the Washington Post and other publications around the world.

Edward’s next title is The Madman’s Gallery: The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures, and Other Curiosities From the History of Art, to be published October 2022 by Simon and Schuster.

The son of an antiquarian book and map dealer, he worked for a London auctioneering company before taking up writing. An unsuccessful amateur sword-swallower, in 2017 he performed the first ever televised “fox tossing” during promotion of his book of the same name about forgotten sports from history. He lives in a dusty heap of old maps, books and other antiquarian curiosities in Berkshire.

“Brooke-Hitching’s prose is elegant and witty. A worthy inheritor to D’Israeli.” Spectator

“A mine of information” – Simon Mayo, Books of the Year

“Writes great books” – Sandi Toksvig