Jonathan Lee was born in Surrey, England in 1981, and graduated from the University of Bristol with a First in English Literature.
was a runner-up in the Edinburgh Festival's First Book Award 2010[3] and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for literature in 2011.
The novel fictionalises the events of the real-life Brighton Hotel bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1984, in their attempt to assassinate UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
[6] In 2021 Lee's novel The Great Mistake was published, concerning the life and death of New York civic leader Andrew Haswell Green.
The Great Mistake was selected as WNYC's "Get Lit" book club pick for September 2021.