Ruth Brandon (born 1943) is a British journalist, historian and author.
Brandon began her career as a trainee producer for the BBC, working in radio and television. She moved to work in freelance journalism and as an author. She is the author of many works of both fiction and nonfiction.
Brandon's popular book The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1983) was republished by Prometheus Books. The book has been an influence on skeptics as it debunked spiritualism by documenting the absurdity and fraud in mediumship.Martin Gardner wrote "Thousands of books about spiritualism have been written by believers, skeptics, and fence-sitters, but none demonstrates as convincingly as The Spiritualists the unbelievable ease with which persons of the highest intelligence can be flimflammed by the crudest of psychic frauds."
In the early 1980s Brandon was involved in a dispute with the paranormal author Brian Inglis over the mediumship of Daniel Dunglas Home in the New Scientist magazine.
Brandon lives in London with her husband Philip Steadman, an art historian. Their daughter, Lily, was born 1982.
Fiction
Non Fiction