John Foley

John Foley is an actor, puzzle setter and Audie®  -nominated audiobook producer. After years of stage work he turned mainly to audio and writing. He has scripted and voiced hundreds of programmes for BBC English/World Service. Other audio work includes adapting numerous plays by writers as diverse as Alan Bennett, Brecht, Ibsen, John Osborne, J. B. Priestley and Victoria Wood for World Service Drama and Radio 4; and for Macmillan, Naxos, Random House and other publishers producing 250+ unabridged fiction and nonfiction audiobooks including works by Boccaccio, Byron, Agatha Christie, Chekhov, Wilkie Collins, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Hardy, Henry James, Kate Mosse, Kipling, Salman Rushdie, Sir Walter Scott, Bram Stoker, Trollope, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Zola and others.

Previously published work includes The Guinness Book of Beards & Moustaches (with Leslie Dunkling), and The Guinness Encyclopedia of Signs & Symbols; a volume of musical anecdotes for Classic FM; storylining for Disney comics, and graded readers for children including Rubbish Rivals and Smellybear.

He is a regular contributor of French-themed crosswords and puzzles to The Connexion (‘France’s English-language newspaper’), plus puzzles for three London area-specific magazines: The Covent Gardener, The Mayfarer, and to celebrate and promote the City of London The City Courant (after Britain’s first daily newspaper The Daily Courant, first published on 11 March 1702).

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, John is currently also a member of the City of London’s Court of Common Council for the historic ward of Farringdon Within (separated from Farringdon Without in 1394). As a Common Councillor, he’s a Governor of the London Museum (opening Autumn 2026); of Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and of The Honourable The Irish Society. Externally, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers and of the Fishmongers, he’s also a Chevalier of the Confrérie du Sabre d’Or, and an enthusiastic placomusophile.

For the origins of QuizzicalWorks, the stories and the ‘hatman’ logo read here.