Lawrence Norfolk, a British novelist, produces historical novels with complex plots and intricate detail. His novels are also known for their unusually large vocabulary.
He was born in London in 1963, but lived in Iraq until 1967 and then the West Country of England. He read English at King's College and graduated in 1986. He worked briefly as a teacher and later as a freelance writer for reference books. In 1991, he won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, Lemprière's Dictionary, about events surrounding the publication, in 1788, of John Lemprière dictionary on classical mythology and history.