Elected: 2015
Year of birth: 1971
Ruth Scurr is a biographer, historian and literary critic. Her first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (2006), won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times in 2009. Her second book, John Aubrey: My Own Life (2015) was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Her third book, Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows (2021) won the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award for Biography. She has regularly reviewed both fiction and non-fiction since 1997, and has judged many literary awards including: the Man Booker Prize (2007), the Samuel Johnson Prize (2014), the Baillie Gifford Prize (2023) and the David Cohen Prize for Literature (2025). Ruth Scurr is a Professor and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she is a Fellow.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
