John Cornwell

John Cornwell was born in London and educated at St Benet's Hall, Oxford, and Christ's College, Cambridge. He is the author of three novels; a critical biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the international bestseller A Thief in the Night: The Mysterious Death of John Paul I; and the acclaimed Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light, in which he examines the evidence for and against miracles and diabolical intervention. The last two titles are also published by Penguin.

His investigation into a West Country farming tragedy, Earth to Earth, won the British Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award in 1982. From 1978 to 1988 he was on the editorial staff of the Observer. In 1985 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and he is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.