Edward Rutherfurd

Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle (1948) known as a writer of epic historical novels.

Educated locally and at University of Cambridge and Stanford Business School,  he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury.

Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international best-seller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written seven more best-sellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, and two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century, New York and his latest Paris.

His books have been translated into twenty languages. Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America.

Rutherfurd’s novels chronicle the history of settlements through their development up to modern day, mixing fictional characters and families with real people and events—a kind of historical fiction pioneered by James Michener.