Simon Parkin

Simon Parkin is a British author and journalist for magazines, newspapers and websites. He is contributing writer for the New Yorker, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and winner of The Wingate Literary Prize.

During the past decade Parkin has contributed to The New York Times, Harper's, the Guardian, New Statesmen, BBC and a variety of other publications

His work has been featured in 'The Best American Nonrequired Reading'. He is a finalist in the Foreign Press Association Media Awards and recipient of two awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Parkin is the author of several books, including 'Death by Video Game', a New York Times Book Review 'Recommended Read', and 'A Game of Birds and Wolves', a work of narrative non-fiction set during the Second World War. The book was shortlisted for the Mountbatten Prize, and described by the New Yorker as "vivid and engaging."

Parkin’s third book, ‘The Island of Extraordinary Captives’, tells the story of Hutchinson Camp (www.hutchinsoncamp.com), an internment prison established on the Isle of Man in July 1940. It was described by Sir Max Hastings in The Sunday Times as "a powerful book, vivid and moving," and won the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize.

Parkin’s latest book, 'The Forbidden Garden’, tells the story of the botanists who protected the world’s largest seed bank during the 872-day siege of St Petersburg. It was a Guardian Book of the Day, an Economist Book of the Year, and described by the London Review of Books as being “reminiscent of Bulgakov’s The White Guard.”

Parkin grew up in London, graduated from King’s College, and now lives in West Sussex.