John Preston attended
Marlborough College in
Wiltshire from 1967 to 1971. He worked as the Arts Editor of
The Evening Standard and
The Sunday Telegraph. He was
The Sunday Telegraphs television critic for ten years and one of its chief feature writers. Preston wrote four novels between 1996 and 2007. All are set in England in the recent past:
Ghosting in the world of radio and television in the 1950s;
Ink in the dying days of
Fleet Street's importance in journalism in the 1980s;
Kings of the Roundhouse in strife-torn London in the 1970s; and
The Dig in the 1930s. Preston wrote
The Dig, a novelised account of the
Sutton Hoo archaeological dig, after discovering that
his aunt had been one of the key participants.
The Dig has been made into
a feature film starring
Ralph Fiennes,
Carey Mulligan, and
Lily James, released on Netflix in 2021.
A Very English Scandal, Preston's non-fiction account of the
Jeremy Thorpe affair of the 1970s, was adapted into a
television miniseries starring
Hugh Grant and
Ben Whishaw in 2018. His 2020 non-fiction book,
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, won the
Costa Book Award for biographies in 2021, and is being adapted for television by
Working Title. In 2022, Preston authored the script for
Stonehouse, a television series biography of disgraced politician
John Stonehouse. Preston's most recent book,
Watford Forever, examining the takeover of
Watford F.C. by
Sir Elton John and written in collaboration with John himself, was published in November 2023. In 2022, Preston worked as the screenwriter on
Runners, a television drama series about the
Bow Street Runners, and in late 2023 he worked on a mini-series based on
Liz Truss's short-lived tenure as
Prime Minister, entitled
49 Days. ==Critical assessments==