John Dickie

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London. Hodder published his Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia in 2004, to ecstatic reviews. It became an international bestseller and won the CWA Dagger Award for Non-fiction that year.

In 2007, he published Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and their Food which won the 2014 Giovanni Rebora prize, received special commendation in the 2007 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards, and was voted the best food and drink book of the year by Lire magazine with RTL. In 2016, John presented and co-wrote a six-part TV series based on Delizia!, which attracted audiences round the world and was History Channel Italia’s second most popular programme of the year.

Mafia Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Honoured Societies, was published in June 2011 and Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse published in June 2013. In 2005, the President of the Italian Republic appointed him a Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana.

His much-anticipated book, The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World was published in 2020 by Hodder and Stroughton and has been translated into ten languages and counting. The Literary Review call it ‘a work that is sweeping, synthetic, finely crafted and freshly conceived.’

Photo courtesy of Mikael Buck