• ©
  • Caroline Forbes

Michael Holroyd

Born:
  • London, England
Agents:

Biography

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Critical perspective

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Bibliography

On Wheels
A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers
A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families
Mosaic
Swedish Reflections: From Beowulf to Bergman
Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography
The Whispering Gallery: Leaves from a Diplomat's Diary by Hesketh Pearson
Basil Street Blues
Bernard Shaw
Augustus John: The New Biography
Lytton Strachey: The New Biography
The Shaw Companion
Bernard Shaw Volume 4: 1950-1991 The Last Laugh
Bernard Shaw Volume 3: 1918-1950 The Lure of Fantasy
Bernard Shaw Volume 2: 1898-1918 The Pursuit of Power
Bernard Shaw Volume 1: 1856-1898 The Search for Love
Peterley Harvest: The Private Diary of David Peterley
Essays by Divers Hands
William Gerhardie - God's Fifth Column: A Biography of the Age 1890-1940
The Shorter Strachey
The Genius of Shaw: A Symposium
Augustus John: A Biography Volume 2: The Years of Experience
Augustus John: A Biography Volume 1: The Years of Innocence
The Art of Augustus John
Unreceived Opinions
Lytton Strachey by Himself: A Self-Portrait
The Best of Hugh Kingsmill: Selections from his Writings
A Dog's Life
Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography - Volume 2: The Years of Achievement (1910-1932)
Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography - Volume 1: The Unknown Years (1880-1910)
Hugh Kingsmill: A Critical Biography

Awards

2009
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
2007
Knighted batchelor (Kt)
2005
David Cohen British Literature Prize
2001
Heywood Hill Literary Prize
1995
Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France)
1989
CBE
1988
Irish Life Arts Award
1968
Yorkshire Post Book Award (Book of the Year)

Author statement

'I have always been a person to whom things have not happened - sometimes in a most spectacular way. This may have come about because I was largely brought up by grandparents. To compensate for a remarkably inactive life, I filled my head with book-adventures as many solitary children do. Then I went one stage further, stepping from my own life into other people's, where there was a good deal more going on. What I have been trying to do is to develop a non-fiction narrative that can produce parallel stories to those of my subjects. For me, one of the virtues of biography is the humanizing effect it can bring to history. In choosing a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a radical Fabian playwright, and a flagrant Bohemian artist to write about, I have had a chance to plot three overlapping and contending cultures in our recent history with a variety of biographical techniques. As a prequel to these books, I wrote an autobiography, Basil Street Blues, which took the form of a family memoir. I was attempting to fill the gap left by my parents' deaths and show how I had distanced myself from my own family - to become, as it were, adopted by the friends and families of my biographical subjects.'