As Told To

Episode 55: Andrew Crofts


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"I'm quite good at detaching and passing the tissues and just listening," says Andrew Crofts, one of the world's most prolific ghostwriters, on his ability to help his clients share their most intimate, most harrowing, most traumatic experiences in the pages of their memoirs.

As the author or co-author of more than eighty books, including a dozen Sunday Times best-sellers, Andrew is well-known in England for his work behind-the-scenes with top television personalities, footballers, politicians, and ordinary individuals caught in extraordinary circumstances.

He is also well-known among publishers for his willingness to take on any subject, and to collaborate with any celebrity, as long as the project comes with the promise of a good story. "Extremes of evil are as interesting as extremes of goodness," he writes, of his ability to work with heroes and villains alike. In fact, he once told a reporter for The Guardian that he is grateful he was not born early enough to pursue this type of work during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. "I have a horrible feeling that if I'd got the call from Germany in the 1930s," he said, "I would have hopped on that plane like a Mitford."

Learn more about Andrew Crofts:

  • Website
  • Confessions of a Ghostwriter
  • Ghostwriting
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Links to some of Crofts' collaborations discussed in our interview:

  • The Boy Who Never Gave Up, with Dr. Emmanuel Taban:
  • A Boy Called Hyppo, with Hyppolite Ntigurirwa:
  • Sold, with Zana Muhsen

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As Told ToBy Daniel Paisner

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