Michael Paraskos

Michael Paraskos, FRSA (born 1969) is a novelist, lecturer and writer on art, and is the son of the Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos. As well as reviewing exhibitions for BBC Radio 4, he has written several non-fiction and fiction books and essays, and articles on art, literature, culture and politics for various publications including Art Review, The Epoch Times and The Spectator magazine. He has taught in universities and colleges and curated several exhibitions. He is one of the world's leading authorities on the British modernist art critic Herbert Read, and he is also known for his wider theories connecting anarchism and modern art. He lives in West Norwood in south London.

Parascos was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. After an unhappy time at the Frank Montgomery secondary modern school in Canterbury, at the age of 16 Paraskos became a trainee butcher at a Keymarkets supermarket, but after six months of handling fresh meat left, becoming a lifelong vegetarian in the process, to return to formal education. After studying for his university entrance examinations at Canterbury College of Technology, he went on to attend the University of Leeds and University of Nottingham, studying at Leeds under the novelist Rebecca Stott, and at Nottingham with Fintan Cullen where he gained his doctorate on the aesthetic theories of Herbert Read in 2005. In 1991 he established with Ben Read the New Leeds Arts Club, an art society in Leeds based on the original Leeds Arts Club (1903–1923), and became a committee member of the Leeds Art Collections Fund. After teaching at various colleges and universities, and for the WEA, Paraskos became head of Art History for Fine Art at the University of Hull from 1994 to 2000.

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