Background
Magnus Mills was born in Birmingham and brought up in Bristol. After graduating with an economics degree from Wolverhampton Polytechnic, he started a masters degree at the University of Warwick but dropped out before completion.
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'."
Mills's The Restraint of Beasts was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1998, won 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, and The Telegraph, among others. Having written his first quartet of novels for Flamingo, Explorers of the New Century marked a new partnership with Harry Potter publishers 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.
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