Christopher Lloyd was born in April 1968. He is married with two grown-up daughters (Matilda, 28 and Verity, 26). He lives near Sevenoaks, in Kent, with his wife and two westies.
In 1990, Christopher graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge with a double-first class degree in history. He studied under Maurice Cowling and quickly chose to pursue a career in journalism.
His first job was working as a researcher for Sunday Telegraph Editor, Peregrine Worthsthore, who was then writing his memoirs. During this period, Christopher and Perry would meet regularly at The Garrick Club, with an entourage of other journalist colleagues of Perry’s including Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Frank Johnson, Anthony LeJeune and Bruce Anderson. So began Christopher’s lifelong love of The Garrick – at the tender age of 22!
After about a year, his work for Perry was completed and Christopher was accepted onto the graduate traineeship scheme at The Sunday Times (the paper accepted 2 candidates a year out of about of 700 applicants). He was sent by The Sunday Times to City University where he gained a diploma in newspaper journalism.
In 1993 Christopher was appointed Science and Technology Correspondent by the then editor Andrew Neil. Under the guidance of Deputy Editor Ivan Fallon (Christopher’s proposer for The Garrick), Christopher revived and edited the Innovation Pages in the Business News section of The Sunday Times. He then worked directly for Les Hinton, at the time CEO of News International (Christopher’s Seconder for Garrick membership). With Les’s support, Christopher helped develop an online digital media strategy for News International during the ‘dot.com’ boom of the mid to late 1990s.
In January 2000 Christopher was offered the opportunity to become CEO of a small but highly ambitious education publishing company based in Oxford, called Immersive Education. This was co-founded by Demis Hassabis, who went on to found the AI company Deepmind (later sold to Google for $400m). The company strategy was to use the technologies and qualities of computer games to create a new generation of pedagogic products that would engage children in learning in the classroom.
After 5 years building Immersive in the UK and US, and with an extensive insight into what is failing the formal education system, Christopher decided to re-engage with his artistic and literacy side to become an author and lecturer. His aim was to create a new genre of non-fiction resources that would help connect knowledge back together again rather than have it constantly fragmented for children across different subjects and disciplines. He passionately believes that this technique helps children learn better through their natural curiosity and that for many, if not most kids, the real world is far more amazing than anything you can make up.
This resulted in the publication of What on Earth Happened? - The Complete Story of Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day - a 180,000-word book in 42 chapters which was published by Bloomsbury in 2008, under the leadership of Garrick member Nigel Newton. Christopher’s debut book went on to sell more than 500,000 copies worldwide in 15 languages. Wanting to make this adult book more accessible to a younger audience, Christopher then spent 3 months drawing an elaborate three metre-long world history timeline (initially using pencil and paper) which was subsequently published by his own children’s publishing house What on Earth Publishing as The Big History Wallbook.
This fold out timeline book has since sold more than 1m copies worldwide in more than 20 languages. It was followed by another 5 timeline books published in partnership with different institutions including The Natural History Museum (Nature Wallbook), The Science Museum (Science & Engineering Wallbook), The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (The Shakespeare Wallbook) and the National Trust (British History Wallbook). N.B. The Shakespeare Wallbook also features the hilarious story of David Garrick’s use of a mechanical pop-up wig during his performance of Hamlet.
Since 2010, Christopher has been travelling the world giving lectures and talks about his books at literary festivals (including Hay-on-Wye (5 times), Cheltenham Science Festival (x3), Cheltenham Literary Festival, Boswell Literary Festival, Jaipur International Book Festival, Franschhoek Literary Festival, Gibraltar Literary Festival, the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai and many more).
In the same period, Christopher has visited more than 1,000 schools giving inspirational lectures (rather like fellow Garrick member Lord Winston) on everything from world history, the history of science, natural history and the complete plays of Shakespeare. He uses a highly theatrical ‘coat of many pockets’ to deliver his school talks where pupils pick objects out of the pockets as Christopher explains how each one is connected to an extraordinary moment in the story of natural, scientific, world history or in the stories of William Shakespeare.
.jpg)
Christopher now runs two highly successful publishing companies both of which he personally founded. What on Earth Publishing (founded 2010) focuses on non-fiction books for children ages 0-16 while What on Earth Magazines (founded 2022) publishes a monthly non-fiction magazine for children ages 6-12 called What on Earth! Magazine.
In 2023, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail & General Trust took a 45% investment in What on Earth Magazines Ltd. Meanwhile, In May this year, What on Earth! Magazine won the NMA award (Newspapers and Magazines Awards) for Subscription Magazine of the Year against The Spectator (founded 1828).
Other notable moments in the 15-year history of What on Earth Publishing include a partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica which resulted in the creation of a new imprint, Britannica Books. This was launched in 2020 with the publication of Britannica’s All New Children’s Encyclopedia: What We Know and What We Don’t, edited by Christopher Lloyd. The book has since sold more than 500,000 copies in English and is now in 25 languages.
In 2021, Christopher wrote a book for children on Climate Change called It’s Up To Us in partnership HRH The Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) and The Prince’s Foundation. Prince Charles wrote the forward to the book and recorded a video used to make the book’s message appeal to children “to write, paint or draw about a future they wanted to see, one that puts Nature first”.
Aside from his roles as public speaker, author, and publisher, Christopher enjoys hiking in the Swiss Oberland, playing the piano and singing.
His greatest mentor and best friend was also his Great Uncle and namesake, Christopher Lloyd - the gardening writer and horticulturalist who lived at Great Dixter in East Sussex. Christo, as he was affectionally known, died n 2006. Christopher wrote his obituary in The Sunday Times.