John Spurling is an award-winning historical novelist and playwright whose plays have been performed on TV, radio and stage, including at the National Theatre. Among his novels are The Ten Thousand Things, which was highly acclaimed and won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, A Mirror for Monkeys, and his first volumes of retellings of Greek myths, Arcadian Nights and Arcadian Days. He has reviewed for a range of newspapers, magazines and BBC radio, and was for twelve years the art critic of the New Statesman. He lives in London and formerly in Arcadia, Greece, and is married to the biographer Hilary Spurling.

'Arcadian Nights is a brilliant, riveting book that leaves its competitors behind, blinking into the distance, as surely as Theseus left Ariadne' TLS