John Antony Spurling[1] (born 17 July 1936) is a Kenyan-English playwright and author who has written thirty-five plays and seven books. Spurling won the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for The Ten Thousand Things. Spurling worked in various other capacities between the 1960s and 1990s, including announcing for BBC Radio from 1963 to 1966, reviewing books and art for BBC Radio and many magazines and newspapers, and as principal art critic for the New Statesman from 1976 to 1988.