Lynne Truss

b. 1955

Lynne Truss was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004.

Lynne Truss began work as a literary journalist, editing the Books section of The Listener, and as critic, columnist and sportswriter for The Times. She also wrote for Woman’s Journal,  and for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times, for which she regularly reviews books. In 1996 she was named Columnist of the Year for her work on Woman’s Journal, and the following year, was shortlisted for Sportswriter of the Year for her work on The Times. She has written extensively for radio, including dramas, adaptations and short stories.

She has written three novels: Going Loco (1999); Tennyson’s Gift (1996); and With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed (1994).  She also writes scripts and comedy series for BBC Radio 4, the latter including Acropolis Now and A Certain Age. She often presents and contributes to radio discussions and hosted Cutting A Dash, a series about punctuation which led to the writing of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003). This book was a runaway success and surprise best-seller, and won the 2004 British Book Awards Book of the Year.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (2005), is an analysis of manners in modern society. A Certain Age (2007) is a book consisting of 12 radio monologue scripts.

Lynne Truss lives in Brighton. Her 2009 non-fiction book Get Her Off the Pitch: How Sport Took Over My Life (2009) was an account of her four years as a sportswriter. She has since written a novel for cat lovers, Cat Out of Hell (2014).

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