Sonia Purnell is a prize-winning and bestselling biographer hailed as having 'the eye of an historian for rigour, a journalist's for detail and a storyteller's for drama (Financial Times). Her latest work Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman's astonishing life of seduction, power & intrigue, was published to huge media acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic and described as 'revelatory ... rollicking ... rigorous ... riveting'. Purnell is interested in setting the record straight on twentieth-century women whose lives have been overlooked, misrepresented or misunderstood by history, works that led to her recently being described as 'one of the most accomplished biographers of our time' (Liza Mundy). Her work on Virginia Hall, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII's Most Dangerous Spy, won the 2020 Plutarch Award for Best Biography and was a New York Times bestseller. Her book First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill was a book of the year in the Daily Telegraph, the Independent and Lenny Letter, and was shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography. Her first book, Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, was longlisted for the Orwell prize.


Sonia is a highly popular public speaker and broadcaster in the UK and US as well as a sought-after journalist and commentator.