About

“Whoever is a teacher through and through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students – even himself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

For the past twenty-five years I’ve lived in the suburbs of Northwest London – John Betjeman’s “Metroland”. When I’m not teaching, my main occupations are reading and writing, and playing and listening to music.

To date I’ve published four novels – Blue Fruit (“A striking first novel . . . compellingly original” Sunday Telegraph), The Burnt House (“An ambitious novel . . . with a sharp eye for social detail” Sunday Times), The Snail (“Lively has created genuine characters . . wonderfully funny . . he has a genuine talent for comic dialogue and he writes a cool, elegant prose . . a novelist of natural gifts” Times Literary Supplement) and Sing the Body Electric (“As rich and complex a novel of ideas as one could wish for” Salman Rushdie) – and many moons ago was on Granta’s list of twenty “Best Young British Novelists”. I’ve recently completed a new novel, The Central Line. I’ve also published short stories and poetry, and two non-fiction books, Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination and Democracy in Britain: A Reader (with Jack Lively). My journalism has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, New Statesman, Evening Standard, Mail-on-Sunday, Vogue and Cosmopolitan.

For ten years I worked in the TV industry, making current affairs, historical and arts documentaries for British and international broadcasters – credits include Jihad: The Men and Ideas Behind Al Qaeda (PBS/Channel 4) (Co-Producer/Writer) (Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism; CINE Golden Eagle Award; International Emmy Award (short-list)) and Britten’s Children (BBC) (Associate Producer) (Royal Philharmonic Society Creative Communication Award; Grierson Award for Best Arts Documentary (short-list)).

In 2015 I was awarded my PhD from Royal Holloway College, University of London, for a thesis catchily titled “Mediation and Dynamics in the Experience of Narrative Fiction”. It explored how insights from contemporary cognitive psychology can help us understand the processes by which writers and readers imaginatively construct fictional worlds. I’ve published spin-off academic papers on this subject, and spoken at conferences in London, Paris, Vienna, Edinburgh and Bangor.

I have taught for the Arvon Foundation, Morley College, the Workers’ Educational Association and as an Arts Council Writer-in-Residence at HMP Bedford. For nine years I was Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Middlesex University and Programme Leader of MA Novel Writing. Before that, I taught at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and the University of Westminster.

The sculpture of the horse that features on this website is by my great aunt, the wonderful artist Rachel Reckitt, who was a formative influence on me in childhood.

I’m a life-long Arsenal fan!