Robert Douglas-Fairhurst was a Booker Prize judge in 2013 when Eleanor Catton won for 'The Luminaries'. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College.

His books include Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. He is also the author of The Turning Point: A Year That Changed Dickens and the World. He writes regularly on books and film for the Times, Spectator, Guardian, and TLS; other essays and reviews have appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, Literary Review, Prospect, and Vogue. In the past he has worked as a consultant on BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre (2006), Emma (2009), and Great Expectations (2011); in 2015-16 he worked on the 20-part BBC1/Red Planet series ‘Dickensian’, and in 2019 he was an advisor on the hit Netflix feature film, Enola Holmes.

The 2013 Booker Prize shortlist

The Luminaries
Prize winner
Harvest
The Lowland
The Testament of Mary