Philip Gooden read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then taught at secondary level for many years. In 2001 he became a full-time writer. He is the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries based in Elizabethan London and set around Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

'Who's Whose: A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words is that fairly rare thing - a genuinely useful reference book that deserves a handy place on the desk of everyone who wants to use the right word for the job.' Ian Mayes, The Guardian 'A jolly little book...A useful handbook to the booby traps that lie in wait for us all, including such old favourites as imply/infer, uninterested/ disinterested, discreet/ discrete, fazed/phased and so on.' Independent on Sunday 'For those muddled about standard English... If you ever effect instead of affect, or think bears are grisly and bones beneath the patio are grizzly, this masterly and compelling, rather than masterful and compulsive, volume is for you.' The Times 'A guide containing much good sense...uncertain users of the English language in general would best profit from the whole book.' Times Literary Supplement