David Pickering is an experienced author, editor and audiobook narrator, freelance since 1992. A graduate in English language and literature of St Peter’s College, Oxford University, he has worked for many prestigious British and US reference publishers, contributing (often as sole author or chief editor) to over 450 books.

As well as working on general reference books he has compiled numerous texts on English language and literature, the arts, history, folklore, entertainment and other fields. His creative writing includes novels, plays and several volumes of short stories, one of which was longlisted in The Guardian short story competition judged by Stephen King in 2016.

Other publications include anthologies of classic short stories.  He has broadcast many times on a variety of subjects on radio and TV.
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David is currently devoting most of his time to narration projects as well as to his own writing, but will consider any other kind of project if it is interesting enough.  Here are some recent highlights:

2023: Release of audiobook versions of the short story collections Things Undreamt Of, ​Things Lost and The Devils of Mons as well as numerous short stories uploaded to YouTube.

2022: Recording of The Black Cloud, written by the late English astronomer Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, and of all the novel-length works of Charles Williams, admired contemporary and friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

2021: Narration projects included several works by award-winning US sci-fi novelist Avram Davidson, who numbers Neil Gaiman among his many fans.

2020: Received Narrator 2020 Award from Audio Book Reviewer.com. This was for the recording of Moonbird by Grania Davis.  

2019: Recording projects ranged from books by ghosthunter Peter Underwood and Goethe to pastiches of the novels of Jane Austen.

2018: Publication of The Laputa Option as a paperback, ebook and audio book. (see Fiction page).

December 2016: Hope you caught David's Penguin Book of Baby Names playing a starring role in Amazon's Christmas TV advert.