Laura Cumming

Laura Cumming has been the art critic of the Observer since 1999. Before that, she was arts editor of The New Statesman, Literary Editor of the Listener and arts producer at the BBC. Born in Scotland, educated at Oxford, she now lives in London with her husband and twin daughters. The Vanishing Man, a New York Times bestseller, was longlisted for the Baillie-Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and won the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. On Chapel Sands, about the disappearance of her mother as a child, was again shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020 as well as the Costa Biography Award 2019, The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non- Fiction 2019, the National Book Critics Circle Award 2019 and the Duff Cooper Prize 2019.