Christopher Lloyd was born in Dorking, England, in 1968. He became a scholar of History at Peterhouse Cambridge and was awarded a double first class honours degree. He then joined The Sunday Times as Technology and Innovation Editor in 1990. In 1996 he launched the first Internet Editions of The Times and The Sunday Times before becoming editorial director of LineOne, an online service jointed owned by News International and BT.
In January 2000, Chris left journalism to become CEO of Oxford-based educational publishing company Immersive Education. Then, in 2005, he and his wife began home educating their two children. In 2006 the whole family went on a four-month Grand Tour of Europe in a campervan. It was during this trip that Chris decided to become an author and came up with the idea of a holistic world history that would reconnect natural and human history into a single illustrated narrative. What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of Planet, Life and People form The Big Bang to the Present Day was published by Bloomsbury in 2008. It has since been translated into 15 languages worldwide. A sequel called What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World (also published by Bloomsbury) traces the story of life on Earth from its origins to the present day.
In February 2010 Chris launched his own publishing company - What on Earth Publishing Ltd - a collaboration between Chris and Beckenham-based illustrator Andy Forshaw, London based book-designer William Webb and Bloomsbury editors Richard Atkinson and Natalie Hunt. The company's first product, The What on Earth? Wallbook, was published in October 2010. It is an innovative and detailed illustrated history of the world from the beginning of time to the present day displayed on a 2.3 metre-long timeline that can be read like a book or hung on a wall.
Chris is the great nephew of the English gardening guru Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter, with whom he spent very many happy holidays and weekends, but who sadly died in January 2006. Chris misses him everyday.
Chris can be contacted at chris@whatonearthbooks.com
