Alexander Starritt's debut novel The Beast was a 2017 Spectator book of the year; his second novel, We Germans, was published in 2020 and translated into six languages. It won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the United States, and was nominated for the Prix Femina, Prix Medicis and Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. Drayton and Mackenzie is his third. Starritt was born and brought up in Scotland, and now lives in London.