Michael Holroyd

Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd CBE FRHistS FRSL (born 27 August 1935) is an English biographer.

Holroyd was born in London, the son of Basil de Courcy Fraser Holroyd (a descendant of the great-great-grandfather of John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield) and his wife, Ulla Knutsson-Hall.

He was educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater.

In 1964 he published his first book, a biography of the writer Hugh Kingsmill; his reputation was consolidated in 1967–68 with the publication of his life of Lytton Strachey (which the playwright Christopher Hampton later used extensively when writing the screenplay for the 1995 film Carrington). Holroyd has also written biographies of Augustus John and, in four volumes, of Bernard Shaw. His book A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers (2010) concerns the Villa Cimbrone on the Gulf of Salerno and the Edwardian literary and society figures who lived there, such as Ernest Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe.

Holroyd was chairman of the Society of Authors, 1973–83, and from 1985 to 1988 was president of the English branch of PEN. His awards include the 2001 Heywood Hill Literary Prize and the 2005 David Cohen Prize for literature. In 2006, he was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". He was president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2003 to 2008 and was knighted in the 2007 New Year Honours List. Holroyd is a patron of Dignity in Dying.

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