Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd has pursued a broad career as a journalist and author, but also as a general manager in the education business. Lloyd joined The Sunday Times, where he started out as a trainee and became an award-winning science writer. In 1996, Lloyd launched the first internet edition of The Sunday Times and became its internet editor. Five years later, he was appointed chief executive officer of Immersive Education, an education software publishing company based in Oxford. After turning it into a highly profitable company, Lloyd decided to spend time traveling around Europe with his wife and two children.

These travels inspired him to write What on Earth Happened?, a highly entertaining, comprehensive history of the world. Traversing millennia and continents, Lloyd explains  exactly how the Moorish conquest gave Spain its paella, how the Earth’s collision with another young planet created the moon, how dragonflies the size of seagulls emerged out of the prehistoric waters, and how the Big Bang can be detected in your television. It has since been translated into 15 languages, most recently in Japan where it has become a non-fiction best-seller, reaching sales of more than 150,000 copies in the first year.

The book, launched in 2008, became a bestseller, and was quickly followed by What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World, which offers “an eye-opening insight into mankind’s place in nature, and our pivotal relationship with the Earth itself: past, present and future.”

In 2010, Lloyd set up a publishing venture to pioneer new ways of telling global narratives using illustrated publications that can be read like conventional books or unfolded and stuck on a wall. The company’s first book, The What on Earth? Wallbook was followed by What on Earth?  Wallbook of Natural History, which tells the four-billion-years story of life on earth in 1,000 species on a timeline. Additional wallbooks include What on Earth? Wallbook of Sport, among others.

Lloyd now divides his time between writing, publishing and giving lectures throughout the UK and internationally to schools, universities, museums and literary festivals.  He has lectured at The Royal Institution, The Royal Geographical Society, The Natural History Museum, and abroad in the United States, Frankfurt, Gibraltar, Amsterdam and Japan.