Max Egremont is a novelist and biographer. Among his novels are Dear Shadows, Painted Lives and Second Spring. His non-fiction work includes The Cousins, Balfour (a life of the Prime Minister, Arthur James Balfour), Under Two Flags (a life of Major General Sir Edward Spears, a pivotal figure in Anglo-French relations in two world wars) and a biography of the poet Siegfried Sassoon. The Cousins won the Yorkshire Post Best First Book Award and was runner up for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Under Two Flags was short-listed for the Westminster Medal for Military History and Siegfried Sassoon was short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Max Egremont studied Modern History at Oxford. He has contributed to the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement, The Literary Review and reviewed regularly for the Financial Times. He is now working on a study of personalities and changes in East Prussia in the 20th and 21st centuries.