# Giles Foden > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Giles_Foden > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Giles_Foden.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Foden > Source revision: 1354906418 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) English author This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Giles Foden" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Giles Foden Born Giles William Thomas Foden (1967-01-11) 11 January 1967 (age 59) Warwickshire, England Education Yarlet Hall Malvern College Alma mater Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge St John's College, Cambridge Occupations Writer; Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia Notable work The Last King of Scotland (1998) Awards Whitbread First Novel Award; Betty Trask Award; Somerset Maugham Award; Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize **Giles Foden** (born 11 January 1967)[1] is an English author, best known for his novel *[The Last King of Scotland](/source/The_Last_King_of_Scotland)* (1998). ## Biography [Malvern College](/source/Malvern_College) Giles William Thomas Foden[1] was born in [Warwickshire](/source/Warwickshire) in 1967, the son of Jonathan, an agricultural adviser, and Mary, a farmer. On his grandfather's death, the family sold their farm and in 1972 moved to [Malawi](/source/Malawi) in south-eastern Africa.[2] Foden was educated at [Yarlet Hall](/source/Yarlet_School) and [Malvern College](/source/Malvern_College) boarding schools, then at [Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge](/source/Fitzwilliam_College%2C_Cambridge),[3] where he read English, and at [St John's College, Cambridge](/source/St_John's_College%2C_Cambridge). Foden first worked as a journalist for *Media Week* magazine. He later became an assistant editor on *[The Times Literary Supplement](/source/The_Times_Literary_Supplement)* and, between 1995 and 2006, was deputy literary editor at *[The Guardian](/source/The_Guardian)*. Formerly a Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at [Royal Holloway, University of London](/source/Royal_Holloway%2C_University_of_London), and now Professor of Creative Writing at the [University of East Anglia](/source/University_of_East_Anglia), he continues to contribute to *The Guardian* and other periodicals. Foden's first novel, *[The Last King of Scotland](/source/The_Last_King_of_Scotland)* (1998), is set during [Idi Amin](/source/Idi_Amin)'s rule of Uganda in the 1970s. It won the [Whitbread First Novel Award](/source/1998_Whitbread_Awards), a [Somerset Maugham Award](/source/Somerset_Maugham_Award), a Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. The feature film, *[The Last King of Scotland](/source/The_Last_King_of_Scotland_(film))* (2006), starring [Forest Whitaker](/source/Forest_Whitaker), is based on Foden's novel[4] with considerable differences, and Foden himself makes a brief cameo as a journalist at one of Amin's press conferences. His second novel, *[Ladysmith](/source/Ladysmith_(novel))* (1999), is set during the [Anglo-Boer War](/source/Second_Boer_War) in 1899 and tells the story of a young woman, Bella Kiernan, who becomes caught up in the [Siege of Ladysmith](/source/Siege_of_Ladysmith). The book was inspired by letters written by Foden's great-grandfather, Arthur Foden, a British soldier in the [Imperial Yeomanry](/source/Imperial_Yeomanry) in South Africa during the conflict. Giles Foden edited *The Guardian Century* (1999), a collection of the best reportage and feature-writing published in the newspaper during the twentieth century, and he contributed a short story to *The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa*, a collection of short fiction set in Africa by various contemporary writers. *[Zanzibar](/source/Zanzibar_(novel))* (2002), is set in east Africa and explores the events surrounding the bombings of American embassies in 1998. *[Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika](/source/Mimi_and_Toutou_Go_Forth%3A_The_Bizarre_Battle_for_Lake_Tanganyika)*, was published in 2004. In 2009, he donated the short story "(One Last) Throw of the Dice" to Oxfam's *[Ox-Tales](/source/Ox-Tales)* project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Foden's story was published in the *Water* collection.[5] His latest book, *Turbulence*, is a novel about the military interest in meteorology in the Second World War.[6] ## Selected bibliography - 1998: *[The Last King of Scotland](/source/The_Last_King_of_Scotland)* - 1999: *[Ladysmith](/source/Ladysmith_(novel))* - 2002: *[Zanzibar](/source/Zanzibar_(novel))* - 2004: *[Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika](/source/Mimi_and_Toutou_Go_Forth%3A_The_Bizarre_Battle_for_Lake_Tanganyika)* - 2009: *[Turbulence](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Turbulence_(Giles_Foden_novel)&action=edit&redlink=1)* ## Awards and prizes - 1998: [James Tait Black Memorial Prize](/source/James_Tait_Black_Memorial_Prize) (for fiction) (shortlist) for *[The Last King of Scotland](/source/The_Last_King_of_Scotland)* - 1998: [Whitbread First Novel Award](/source/1998_Whitbread_Awards) for *The Last King of Scotland* - 1999: [Betty Trask Award](/source/Betty_Trask_Award) for *The Last King of Scotland* - 1999: [Somerset Maugham Award](/source/Somerset_Maugham_Award) for *The Last King of Scotland* - 1999: [Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize](/source/Winifred_Holtby_Memorial_Prize) for *The Last King of Scotland* ## References 1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-EBW_1-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-EBW_1-1) George Stade and Karen Karbiener (eds), *Encyclopaedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present*, 2nd edn, Infobase Publishing, 2010, p. 176. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["Giles Foden - Literature"](https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/giles-foden). [British Council](/source/British_Council). Retrieved 20 August 2017. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Foden, Giles (2 September 2014). ["For me, Meeting the British blew away the very idea of certainty"](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/meeting-the-british-paul-muldoon-giles-foden). *The Guardian*. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["The Last King of Scotland - Giles Foden"](http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/fodeng/lastking.htm). Retrieved 22 August 2017. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** [Oxfam: Ox-Tales](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html) [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20090520182004/http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html) 20 May 2009 at the [Wayback Machine](/source/Wayback_Machine) 1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** [Mark Lawson](/source/Mark_Lawson) (6 June 2009). ["Atmospheric pressures"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/06/turbulence-giles-foden). *The Guardian*. Retrieved 21 May 2020. ## External links - [An Interview with Giles Foden and an excerpt from *The Last King of Scotland* on RandomHouse boldtype](http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1298/foden/) - [Giles Foden](https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/giles-foden) at [British Council](/source/British_Council): Literature - [Giles Foden](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gilesfoden) at [The Guardian](/source/The_Guardian) Authority control databases International ISNI VIAF GND FAST WorldCat National United States France BnF data Japan Czech Republic Netherlands Norway Poland Israel Academics CiNii ORCID Artists FID People Deutsche Biographie Other IdRef Open Library Yale LUX --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Giles Foden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Foden) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Foden?action=history)). 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