Rachel Halliburton read English and Classics at Cambridge. As a journalist for the past twenty years, she has written for publications including The Times, Financial Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Evening Standard and Independent. She lives in London.
Her first novel, The Optikal Illusion was published was Overlook/Duckworth in 2018
‘The London art world of the late 18th century, with all is backbiting and gossip, springs vividly to life in The Optikal Illusion’ The Sunday Times
‘An assured and enjoyable debut that asks some uncomfortable questions about women’s erasure from the history of art’ –The Times
‘Written with a detail and often a lyricism that makes me go back and reread for the pleasure of it.’ –Anne Perry, international bestselling author of the Monk and Pitt series
‘A remarkable true story of vanity and delusion, which Halliburton turns into a gripping and only partly fictional whodunnit… brings the artists and their art to colourful life and brushes in streaks of feminism, via Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as dark shadows of the French Revolution’ John Spurling, author of The Ten Thousand Things
‘As if stepping into the frame a sensual, intricate and richly textured painting. The novel is a fine achievement by a serious and talented writer’ Weny Wallace, author of The Painted Bridge
‘Utterly absorbing… Halliburton builds up the layers of deception, ambition and scandal into a shimmering, fully textured portrait of Georgian London with all its gloss, dross, glamour and corruption’ Imogen Robertson, author of Instruments of Darkness