No one who has regularly conducted research under the great dome of the Reading Room of the British Library in the past forty years will be unaware of Vincent Brome. Whether at his desk, quietly exchanging literary gossip in a corner, or advising a succession of young readers over tea in the coffee room, he has been a fixture in what he calls "the Intelligence Nerve Centre of scores of international scholars and writers." One of the last of a vanishing breed-the man of letters earning his living by his pen-he has used the Reading Room as his workplace to produce an impressive number of novels, histories, essays, articles, radio and television talks, and, in particular, biographies.

Herbert Vincent Brome was born in Streatham, a south London suburb, on 14 July 1910 to Emily Maud Brome and Nathaniel Gregory Brome, a clerk in the London office of an American meat-canning...