D.J. Taylor is a British novelist, journalist and critic. He is the author of two acclaimed biographies: Thackeray (1999) and Orwell: the life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003. He has written 11 novels, the most recent of which are The Windsor Faction (2013), Secondhand Daylight (2012), Derby Day (2011), At the Chime of a City Clock (2010), Ask Alice (2009) and Kept: a Victorian mystery (2006). His critical works include A Vain Conceit: British fiction in the 1980s (1989) and After the War: the novel and England since 1945 (1993). His journalism appears in the Independent, the Guardian, the Spectator and the New Statesman.