Ian Hamilton is perhaps best known for a literary biography that cannot legally be bought in the version in which it was first written. Having achieved a substantial reputation as a poet, editor, book reviewer, literary historian, and broadcaster, he published in 1982 a well-received biography of Robert Lowell. However, his unsuccessful attempt to publish a biography of J. D. Salinger in 1988 resulted in his becoming the most controversial biographer in recent times.

Robert Ian Hamilton was born on 24 March 1938, the son of Robert Tough Hamilton and Daisy McKay Hamilton, in King's Lynn, Norfolk. He has been married twice, first to Gisela Dietzel in 1963, and then to Ahdat Soueif in 1981. He has one son by his first marriage and two by his second.

He was educated at Darlington Grammar School and, later, at Keble College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1962. While at Oxford he founded and...