John Spurling

Novelist, playwright and critic John Spurling’s book The Ten Thousand Things won the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

The novel, set in Imperial China, is the story of Wang Meng, one of the fourteenth century’s great painters, and was acclaimed by the chair of the judging panel as 'a book which deserves enormous credit'.

In his presentation and reading, which he titles with a metaphorical reference to croquet, John will talk about the difficulties of writing The Ten Thousand Things and of getting it published.