Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Angela Hughes-Hallett (born 7 December 1951) is a British cultural historian, biographer and novelist.

In November 2013, she won the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction for her biography of the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, entitled The Pike. The book also won the 2013 Costa Book Award (Biography) and the Duff Cooper Prize. Her most recent book is The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (2024).

Biography Lucy Hughes-Hallett has written several works of nonfiction: Cleopatra, Heroes, The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio, and The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham. According to Hughes-Hallet, for her biography Cleopatra and Heroes she drew significantly from Lives by Plutarch. In 2013, for her book The Pike about Gabriele D'Annunzio, she won the Samuel Johnson Prize, Costa Book Award, and Duff Cooper Prize. She has judged the WH Smith Literary Award, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Encore Award, the RSL Jerwood Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize. In 2021, she was the Chair of the Judges of the International Booker Prize.

In 2025, she continued to write film and literary critiques for The Telegraph and The Guardian.

Personal life In 1984, she married publisher Dan Franklin. They have two daughters.

Her brother is Thomas Hughes-Hallett.

Selected publications 1990: Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions. New York: Harper & Row; Revised edition, HarperCollins Publishers, 2026. 2004:. Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. London: Harper Press; Heroes (no subtitle), New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2013: The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, London: 4th Estate; Gabriele d'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2017: Peculiar Ground: A Novel, London: 4th Estate. 2019: Fabulous: Stories, London: 4th Estate. 2024: The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham, London: 4th Estate; New York: HarperCollins Publishers.