Hester Grant

Biography

Hester Grant studied modern history at Christ Church, Oxford, where she was awarded the J. L. Field Exhibition and the Keith Feiling History Prize. She subsequently practised as a barrister in Nottingham and London, before giving up her legal career to pursue her interest in eighteenth-century British history. Her first book, The Good Sharps, a biography of a remarkable eighteenth-century family, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2020. Hester has recently completed work on The Twitnam Summer, an account of Jonathan Swift’s visit to England in the summer of 1726 and the writing and publication of Gulliver’s Travels. It is due to be published by HarperCollins in June 2026. She lives in Westminster and Suffolk, where she has recently restored a mediaeval priests’ college.