Andrew McConnell Stott likes books, potatoes and crunchy fruit. He is the author of "Comedy" (Routledge, 2005; 2nd edn, 2014) and "The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi" (Canongate, 2009), which won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography, and the George Freedley Memorial Award. Grimaldi was a BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week,' and was named as one of the Guardian's "Books of the Year" for 2010. In 2010-11, he was a Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.His new book, "The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature's Greatest Monsters" (Canongate/Pegasus 2013), was a best book pick of 2013 for both The Big Issue and The Sunday Times.