Michael Holroyd is the author of three major biographies, all of which have been influential and widely acclaimed. His two-volume biography of Lytton Strachey not only initiated a revived interest in the Bloomsbury Group but also renewed interest in the art of biography by the way in which he combined careful scholarship, imaginative and psychological insight, and narrative skills. His lives of Augustus John and Bernard Shaw which followed clearly confirmed his stature as one of the leading biographers of our time.

Michael de Courcy Fraser Holroyd, the only son of Basil and Ulla Holroyd, was born in London on 27 August 1935 and lived in Drayton Gardens, South Kensington, until he was three years old. His parents had met on a North Sea ferry when Holroyd's Anglo-Irish father was returning to England having been trying to sell Lalique glass in Sweden and his Swedish mother was coming to England...