Katharine Quarmby

Katharine is an award-winning writer, editor and investigative journalist.  

Katharine’s latest book is her debut novel, The Low Road, which was published in the US in September 2023 by Unbound.  Set in rural Norfolk, London and Australia in the early nineteenth century, it is based on a true story that Katharine uncovered in her Norfolk hometown, of a Norfolk woman, Mary Tyrell, who was staked through the heart after death in 1813. She had been questioned repeatedly about a suspected infanticide.

An older daughter, known only by the initials A.T., had survived. Katharine traced her to the Refuge for the Destitute in Hackney which is in London. She had met another destitute, Anne Simpkins, there and they forged a friendship that deepened into love. In December 1821 they stole laundry from the Refuge, but were caught, stood trial at the Old Bailey, the criminal court, and were sentenced to transportation to Australia which was then a penal colony.

The Low Road novel is about uncovering lost histories: the stories of poor women from rural areas, the stories of the imprisoned, the stories of convicts sent to penal colonies, the stories of people who often left no records as a result of illiteracy and hardship. It also contains an important strand of narrative that explores experiences left out of the history books: a same-sex romance that evolves into a marriage of sorts two centuries before this was legally possible.

Aside from The Low Road, Katharine mainly writes on environmental injustice, racism, disability rights, the care system, violence and hate crime. Her reporting has appeared in the Guardian, the Economist, the Atlantic, Newsweek, The Times of London, the Telegraph, the New Statesman, the Spectator and other outlets.

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