Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike , a biography of Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, the Costa Biography Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award. Her other books are Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen . Lucy Hughes-Hallett is also a respected critic and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.