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Michael holroyd illness

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Michael Holroyd was born in 1935, and educated at Eton and the Maidenhead Public Library. His biographies of Hugh Kingsmill, Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw have established him as one of the most influential biographers of modern times. He was awarded the CBE in 1989 and was knighted in 2007. A past chairman of the Society of Authors and the Book Trust, past president of English PEN and a former member of the Arts Council, Michael Holroyd currently chairs the Council of the Royal Society of Literature and lectures around the world for the British Council and at literary festivals. His account of his own family’s lives before, during and after the second world war, BASIL STREET BLUES (Abacus), and its sequel, MOSAIC, were published to a chorus of outstanding reviews. His collection of essays and journalism, WORKS ON PAPER (Little, Brown) was published in 2002. He won the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2005. Michael's latest book is A BOOK OF SECRETS. He is married to novelist Margaret Drabble and lives in London and Somerset. His semi-autobiographical nove

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In his book Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography Michael Holroyd refers to three categories of biographers:

  1. the biographer who writes about the very famous – film stars, murderers and royal family
  2. the ambitious professor who writes historical and political  biographies
  3. the literary or artistic biographer.

Holroyd belongs to the third category. And he does it very well. So well that he is referred to as “one of the most influential biographers and was invited to write the authorized biography of Bernard Shaw. At the time (1988) the deal caused a great stir as he got an advance of more than a million dollars – more than anyone had ever received.”  In Writers and Company

His other works include biographies of Lytton Strachey, the painter Augustus John, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving,

He has also published three autobiographical works—Basil Street Blues, Mosaic, and A Book of Secrets—and which are also meditations on biographical research and writing.  In The Paris Review.

Although he never attended university (his

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Michael Holroyd

Writer, biographer

Sir Michael de Courcy Fraser HolroydCBE FRHistS FRSL (born 27 August 1935) is an English biographer.

Early life and education

Holroyd was born in London, the son of Basil de Courcy Fraser Holroyd (a descendant of Sir George Sowley Holroyd, Justice of the King's Bench, whose ancestor was Isaac Holroyd, younger brother of George, the great-great-grandfather of John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield),[1] and his wife, Ulla (known as "Sue"), daughter of Karl Knutsson-Hall, a Swedish army officer. His parents having separated- their son "left to grow up in a bewilderingly extended family, shunted back and forth among parents and stepparents and grandparents and uncles and aunts"- Holroyd was raised at his father's family home, Norhurst, at Maidenhead, Berkshire. The Holroyds "for a time enjoyed a small fortune", provided by, amongst other things, an Indian tea plantation; this fortune was eventually "done in by mismanagement of resources and foolish investments" including investment in Lalique glassware, his grand

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