Born in 1969, Alex Butterworth is an historian, writer and dramatist whose first book Pompeii: The Living City won the Longmans-History Today New Generation Book of the Year. He lives in Oxford.

"Exhilarating...almost any paragraph packs more action than an entire Dan Brown novel" Financial Times "Butterworth has created an impressive work which will captivate those unfamiliar with anarchist history and teach even specialists much that they did not know before" Independent "Compelling and insightful... The World That Never Was is a compelling narrative history both of a generation of demonised and battered - but optimistic - revolutionaries...and of the political police forces ranged against them" -- Stuart Christie Guardian "A rich and passionate account of the world's first international terrorist campaign... Brilliant... A thrilling and important book" Sunday Times "One of the most absorbing depictions of the dark underside of radical politics in many years...a riveting account, teeming with intrigue and adventure and packed with the most astonishing characters" New Statesman