Job: - Author
Website: - www.andrew-taylor.co.uk
Twitter and Instagram: - @andrewjrtaylor
Facebook:- andrew.tayloratlydmouth.9
Introduction
Andrew Taylor is the author of six different series (Dougal, Sergeant Jim Bergerac (written as Andrew Saville), Blaines, Lydmouth, Roth Trilogy and Marwood and Lovett). He is also the author of over half a dozen standalone novels and half a dozen children’s books to name a few.
His books have been nominated and won numerous wards with his first novel, Caroline Minuscule (1982), wining the John Creasey Memorial Award of the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain. He is the only author to have won the CWA's Historical Dagger three times with Office of the Dead (2000), The American Boy (2003) and The Scent of Death (2013). The American Boy a gothic mystery linked to Edgar Allan Poe's boyhood years in England, was one of the ten titles featured in Channel 4's Richard and Judy Book Club 2005 and was also selected for The Times Top Ten Crime Novels of the Decade.
In 2009 Andrew Taylor received the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. In 2016 he started a series set in Restoration England featuring James Marwood a government agent and Clerk in the court of King Charles II and Catt Lovett an architectural designer The first book in the series being The Ashes of London (2016). In 2020 The King's Evil (2019) won the Historical Writers Association (HWA) Gold Crown for best historical novel of the year. The seventh book in the series Treason is due to be published in March 2027.
His most recent book Schooling in Murder (2025) was a Times/Waterstones No 1 bestseller and was long-listed for the 2026 Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year.
Current book? (This can either be the current book that you are reading or writing or both)
I’ve just finished Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and Mackenzie, which is a weird bromance set in the world of high finance in the last 50 years and featuring all too historical figures, including tech billionaires and at least one chairmen of the Fed. Not a crime novel but weirdly, hypnotically readable. As for writing, I’ve just been tidying up my new 17c novel, Treason, which comes out next March. I’ve also been working on two side projects, as yet under wraps. After that comes a return to the 17c.
Why do you think anti-heroes are so interesting to readers?
I suppose they fascinate us partly because they have the uncomfortable power to enact our darkest desires and deepest fears.
Which two anti-heroes or enemies would you invite to dinner and why?
Tom Ripley, of course, who’d probably be charming and present you with a bottle of very nice wine while eying up your valuables (he’d be out of luck with us). And perhaps Professor Moriarty. Conan Doyle presents him (when he mentions him at all) as a convenient blank labelled ‘Evil Mastermind’. But I bet he’s got a rich and fascinating interior life, as well as some interesting tales to tel about the dark side of Sherlock Holmes.
How do you relax?
In a variety of ways.
Which anti hero would you like to be on your side in a difficult situation.
Tom Ripley again. He tends to wriggle out tricky situations in the end. I’m hoping he would help me do the same.
If you were to write a book involving an anti-hero where would you set it and why?
I have cleverly anticipated your question by already writing several novels featuring an anti-hero, including my very first, Caroline Minuscule, which was set when it was written – ie 1980-1. (Rereading it makes me feel slightly queasy today.) I’ve no idea where I’d set another book involving an anti-hero. You’ll have to come back to me on that one…
How would you describe your latest published book?
A Schooling in Murder is a pastiche of a Golden Age whodunit set in a third-rate girls’ boarding school in 1945. The twist is that it’s narrated by the murder victim, who is already dead at the start of book. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed writing this novel.
With Bad Apples: crime fiction’s enemies and anti-heroes theme at St Hilda's this year, who are your three favourite anti-heroes
Tom Ripley (there’s a theme emerging here), Richard III (if he actually is a villain), and the chillingly evil Jack Havoc in Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke.
Which 3 films or television series featuring anti-heroes would you rewatch and why.
The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. And (some way behind) The Wire. Because all three explore the moral and social consequences of evil in such a chillingly plausible way.
What are you looking forward to at St Hilda's?
I’ve been coming the Crime Fiction Weekend for nearly 30 years and for the same reasons: meeting old friends and making new ones; discussing crime fiction with people who share this strange passion of ours; and coming away with a good reading list. Also, two days without doing any washing up.
A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins Publisher)
England, May 1945. In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds. Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she’s run away, but in fact she has met a violent end. Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved… and these echoing halls hide a killer.
Information on how to buy online tickets can be found here. The programme can be found here.
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