Ruth Scurr (London, 1971) is a historian, biographer and literary critic. She teaches History and Politics at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College. His first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution, won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and was included among the 100 best books of the decade in The Times. She writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal.