Sam Taylor was born in 1970 and grew up in Nottinghamshire. After going to university in Hull and North Carolina, where he read American Studies and wrote a dissertation on Bruce Springsteen and the American Dream, his plan was to travel around southern Europe and write a novel. Instead he accidentally became a journalist for The Observer, where he wrote and edited for eight years. In 2001 he quit his job and moved, with his wife and young children, to rural southwest France. He is now a full-time writer.