Simon Adams, born in Bristol in 1955, is a British author of illustrated reference books for children. He studied history and politics at London and Bristol universities and worked as an editor of children's non-fiction before turning to writing full time in 1990. He has written or contributed to dozens of titles for Dorling Kindersley, Kingfisher, Franklin Watts and the National Geographic Society, chiefly on twentieth-century history — the two world wars, the Cold War — on exploration and on world atlases, among them the DK Children's World Atlas.