Simon Scarrow

Simon Scarrow as born in Nigeria and lived there until his family was evacuated towards the end of the Biafran War. After a short period in Britain the family went on to live in Hong Kong, California and the Bahamas before settling back in the UK. After school Simon attended the University of East Anglia where he completed his first degree, thesis, PGCE and a Diploma in Creative Writing. He was worked as from the bottom up, starting as a toilet cleaner, before working as an accountant and computer programmer before finding his calling as a teacher. Simon’s interest in writing stories began at school and he wrote his first (unpublished) novel after leaving university. He continued to write alongside his day job, eventually being published in 2000 when UNDER THE EAGLE came out – fortuitously in the same month as the release of Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’ movie. After the first five novels had been published Simon took on writing a second book each year but found that hard to balance with his teaching commitments and so left teaching, ‘temporarily’, in 2005.

In addition to his long-standing Roman series, Simon has written a four-book epic on the lives of Napoleon and Wellington, a novel about the Siege of Malta in 1565, a novel set in Greece during World War 2, a series of young adult novels, three novels co-written with T J Andrews and PLAYING WITH DEATH a technological crime novel with his former student Lee Francis.

BLACKOUT (published March 2021) is his first full-on crime novel and will be the start of a series following the investigations of Kriminalpolizei inspector Schenke, set in Berlin during the Second World War.

Simon’s novels have sold several million copies and have been translated into over twenty languages.