Ruth Scurr FRSL
Alma mater	Oxford University; Cambridge University; Ecole Normale Supérieure
Employer	Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Notable work	Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (2006) John Aubrey: My Own Life (2015)
Spouse	Sir Peter Stothard (m. 2021)
Website	www.ruthscurr.co.uk

Ruth Scurr, aka Lady Stothard (born 1971), is a British writer, historian and literary critic. She is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. ^[1]

Contents

• Education
• Works
• Career
• Bibliography
• Books
• Dissertations, theses
• Critical studies and reviews
• See also
• References
• External links

Education

Scurr was educated at St Bernard's Convent, Slough; Oxford University, Cambridge University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. She won a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000.

Works

Scurr's first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 2006; Metropolitan Books, 2006), ^{[2] [3]} won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize (2006), ^[4] was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize (2006), long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2007) and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times in 2009. ^[5] It has been translated into five languages.

Her second book, John Aubrey: My Own Life (Chatto & Windus, 2015; New York Review of Books, 2016), ^[6] was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Biography Award ^[7] and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Her third book, Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows (Chatto & Windus, 2021; Norton, 2021), was published to critical acclaim ^[8] on both sides of the Atlantic ^[9] to mark the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's death. It won the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award for Biography (2022). ^[10]

Career

Scurr began reviewing regularly for The Times and The Times Literary Supplement in 1997. ^[11] Since then she has also written for The Daily Telegraph , ^[12] The Observer , New Statesman , ^[13] The London Review of Books , ^[14] The New York Review of Books , The Nation , ^[15] The New York Observer , The Guardian ^[16] and The Wall Street Journal . ^[17]

She was a judge on the Man Booker Prize panel in 2007, the Samuel Johnson Prize panel in 2014, and the Baillie Gifford Prize panel in 2023. ^{[18] [19] [20]} She is a member of the Folio Prize Academy. ^[21]

Scurr is Director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences for Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she has been a Fellow since 2006. Her research interests include: 17th- and 18th-century history of ideas; biographical, autobiographical and life writing; the British and French Enlightenments; the French Revolution; Revolutionary Memoir; early Feminist Political Thought; and contemporary fiction in English. ^[22] Scurr was the Senior Treasurer of a Cambridge-based publication, Per Capita Media from January 2024 to December 2025. ^{[23] [24]}

Having served on the Council since 2020, Scurr became acting Chair of the council of the Royal Society of Literature in January, 2025. ^[25]

Bibliography

See also

• Maximilien Robespierre
• 2015 in literature

References

External links

• Official website