Alison Light is the author of the acclaimed Mrs. Woolf and the Servants. She is Honorary Professor in the Department of English at University College, London, and a contributor to the London Review of Books and writes regularly for the British press. Common People was shortlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize in Non-fiction and was a Book of the Year in the Times, Telegraph, Financial Times, Spectator, History Today, and the Scottish Herald.