Magnus Mills

Mills's 2015 novel The Field of the Cloth of Gold was shortlisted for the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize.

Freedom of will is a key theme in Mills' work. What do the fences in The Restraint of Beasts suggest? Who, or what are the "beasts"? Can the protagonist of All Quiet on the Orient Express ever assert his freedom? Does it exist? This theme is explored most vividly in Three to See the King, whose characters live in a largely allegorical world that lacks many of the identifiable conventions of working class life — they don't have jobs, pubs or anything more than a rudimentary social network. The main character attempts to establish a simple freedom for himself within his small, beloved house, only to find himself at the mercy of unsolicited relationships and the ideology of a charismatic newcomer. Like most of Mills's characters, he remains desperately attached to his routine, attempting to meet each twist with a calm, reasonable approach, until it becomes impossible. In Explorers of the New Century, the characters begin as masters of their mules and the art of exploration, but as their journey continues, the harsh climate and terrain of the land strip them of control over their own destinies. At the outset of the book, the explorers are able to assign or deny freedom to their mules; by the end, most of the explorers are dependent on the mules for their own freedom.

Mills's The Restraint of Beasts was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1998. It won him the McKitterick Prize in 1999, and earned a rare jacket quote from reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, who called it "a demented, dead-pan comic wonder." His 2005 novel Explorers of the New Century was released to good reviews from The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, and other papers. Having written his first quartet of novels for Flamingo, Explorers of the New Century marked a new partnership with Bloomsbury. Mills has also written two books of very short stories: Once in a Blue Moon and Only When the Sun Shines Brightly for Acorn Books. In his 2011 novel A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In, Mills depicts a kingdom whose king has gone missing without explanation, leaving an absurdist realm "lost in an English fairy-tale world."

Between 1979 and 1986 he built high-tensile fences for a living, an experience he drew upon for his first novel, The Restraint of Beasts. In 1986 Mills moved to London and became a bus driver, used for his 2009 novel The Maintenance of Headway. Although much was made in the British press of Mills' bus-driving background, in reality he had written a column for The Independent before becoming a novelist. Rumours also claimed that he'd earned a total of £1 million, but the real figure was closer to £10,000. Mills later claimed that he lost his gig at The Independent when "one week, in exactly the same place that my column had been, there was a new item entitled 'Bridget Jones' Diary'."