David James Smith

David James Smith was born in south London and has been a journalist all his working life. His definitive account of the James Bulger case, The Sleep of Reason was published in 1994 by Century (Random House). He wrote for the monthly magazine Esquire before joining the Sunday Times Magazine, for whom he has travelled around the world writing cover stories, investigative articles, reportage and profiles. It was an article for the Magazine that led to his second book, All About Jill: The Life and Death of Jill Dando, which was published by Little Brown in 2002.

Supper With the Crippens, about the notorious Edwardian crime, was highly acclaimed when it was published by Orion in 2005. One Morning in Sarajevo made a gripping non-fiction thriller out of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June, 1914: it was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in 2008.

David’s latest book Young Mandela was published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in June 2010. Little Brown published the book in the US in December the same year. He continues to write for the Sunday Times Magazine and has won the Feature Writer of the Year category at the British Press Awards.

David lives in Lewes, East Sussex with his partner and their four children.