MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell MacInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, and was educated in Australia. He served in the British intelligence corps during World War II.
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
Penelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The …
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition t…
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, satirist, and journalist, best known for his keen social commentary and his novel Vanity Fair (1847–1848). His works often explored themes of ambit…
Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil …
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie Series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland …
Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound phi…
James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his …
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations over the years.
Iain Pears is an English art historian, novelist and journalist. He was educated at Warwick School, Warwick, Wadham College and Wolfson College, Oxford. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the…
English-born American Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist who portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such…
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more ac…
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the fir…
Alan Sillitoe was an English writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s (although he, in common with most of the other writers to whom the label was applied, had never welcomed it). For more see…
People best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play Look Back in Anger (1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English …
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an Academy Award- and Palme d'Or-winning American film director, screenwriter and actor. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an independent filmmaker whose films used non…
Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of three novels: the Booker Prize- and NBCC Award–shortlisted The Mars Room; The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times top…
Barbara Comyns was educated mainly by governesses until she went to art schools in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Her father was a semi-retired managing director of a Midland chemical firm. She was o…
Nghi Vo is the author of the acclaimed novellas The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes …
Samuel Dickson Selvon was born in San Fernando in the south of Trinidad. His parents were East Indian: his father was a first-generation Christian immigrant from Madras and his mother's father was Sco…
Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law at the University of London and later worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reputable law fi…
