Matt Houlbrook

Matt Houlbrook is a prize-winning historian and Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham. He grew up in South Humberside, just outside Scunthorpe, and made his way to Birmingham via Cambridge, Colchester, Oxford, and Liverpool. His first book Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-57 (2005) was Longman-History Today Book of the Year and won the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize for the best first book in British history. Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (2016) was a Guardian Book of the Week. HIs third book, Songs of Seven Dials, was published in November 2025. Matt likes greyhounds, cycling, and obscure stories from the 1920s and 1930s.