Writing Podcast Episode 728: Tom Rob Smith explores love and marriage in ‘Twenty Years Together’

Tom Rob Smith graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge University in 2001, with a first in English Literature. One of his first writing jobs was story lining Cambodia’s first soap operas. Born in 1979 to a Swedish mother and an English father, he wrote his first novel Child 44 at the age of twenty-six.

Child 44 was an international publishing sensation, translated into over thirty five languages and selling over two million copies. Among its many honours, Child 44 won the International Thriller Writer Award for Best First Novel, the Galaxy Book Award for Best New Writer and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. The book was the first thriller to be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize as well as being shortlisted for both the Costa First Novel Award and the inaugural Desmond Elliot Prize. Child 44 was turned into a movie starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman produced by Scott Free, a movie that was subsequently banned in Russia.

The Farm is a number 1 international bestseller and the first crime thriller to be longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

His latest novel is called Cold People.

In addition to writing novels, his first original television show London Spy (BBC2 & BBC America) with Ben Whishaw and Charlotte Rampling was been nominated for numerous awards, including both BAFTA and an RTS nomination for best mini-series. Charlotte Rampling was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. For his second piece of television, he wrote all the scripts for American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (FX), which won him a Writer’s Guild Award for best adapted series, An Emmy and a Golden Globe for best limited series.