Simon Edge

He is the author of With Friends Like These, a critique of the Left’s record on gay rights.

His first novel The Hopkins Conundrum, based on the life of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, was published by Lightning Books in May 2017. It was described as “a pleasurable literary thriller [in which] Edge wears his Hopkins learning lightly” by The Spectator and “a novel enjoyable on every level” by the Daily Express. It was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award 2017-18. His second novel The Hurtle of Hell, published by Lightning Books in July 2018, was inspired by scientific research into what happens in the brain during a near-death experience. His third, A Right Royal Face-Off (Lightning, 2019) is a comic novel based on the life of the painter Thomas Gainsborough, and has been described by world Gainsborough authority Hugh Belsey as “beguiling” and “beautifully managed and brilliantly resolved”.

He was married to Ezio Alessandroni, a former Roman Catholic priest, until the latter's death from cancer in March 2017.

He got his first job in journalism at the Middle East business magazine MEED and went on to be the final editor of Capital Gay. He was on staff at the London Evening Standard and joined the Daily Express in 1999, where he spent many years as a feature writer and theatre critic. He is a former senior contributing editor of Attitude magazine.

Simon John Edge (born 25 December 1964 in Chester, UK) is a British novelist and journalist.