Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Union, before taking his master's and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he later returned to Cambridge as a visiting fellow at Churchill College. He has been a bookseller, publisher, journalist writing for The Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator, Guardian and since 1988 has run his own literary agency. He is President of the Biographers Club, sits on the board of Biographers International Organisation and is a Trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. His books include the prize-winning Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (2015) and the top ten Sunday Times bestsellers The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves (2019) and Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (2021).