- John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy , also referred to as John F. Kennedy, Kennedy, John Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, or JFK, was the thirty-fifth President of the United States. In 1960 he became the youngest person ever to be elected President of the United States, and the second youngest, after Theodore Roosevelt, to serve. Kennedy served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. - Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 - 24 January 1965) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman, orator and strategist, Churchill was also a soldier in the British Army. He has been studied to a unique extent as part of modern British and world history. - Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson LL.D. (13 December 1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson, is one of England's best known literary figures : a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist, well known for his "aphorisms". Dr Johnson is the most quoted of English writers after Shakespeare and has been described as one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century England. - Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. - David McCullough
David Gaub McCullough (born July 7, 1933) is an American historian and bestselling author. A two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, he is widely referred to as a "master of the art of narrative history." Among his most well-known books are "The Path Between the Seas", "Truman", "John Adams", and his most recent volume, "1776" (a "New York Times" and Amazon bestseller). - James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck and 1st Baronet (October 29, 1740 - May 19, 1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the eldest son of a judge, Alexander Boswell, 8th Laird of Auchinleck and his wife Euphemia Erskine, Lady Auchinleck. Boswell's mother was a strict Calvinist, and he felt that his father was cold to him. The heir to the estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, which he inherited on the death of his father, … - Plutarch
Mestrius Plutarchus, better known in English as Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist. Plutarch was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia [Greece], a town about twenty miles east of Delphi. His oeuvre consists of the "Parallel Lives" and the "Moralia". - Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, CBE (born August 27, 1935) is a biographer, born in London and educated at Eton College. From 1985 to 1988 he was the president of the English branch of PEN. He is married to the author Margaret Drabble. Awards include the 2001 Heywood Hill Literary Prize and the 2005 David Cohen British Literature Prize. Holroyd was knighted in the 2007 New Years' Honours List. - Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton (born 1953) is a former British Fleet Street tabloid journalist. He is celebrated as a biographer of Diana, Princess of Wales. - Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. He is best known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill. - Carl Sandburg
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 - July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois of Swedish parents and died at his home, named Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat." He was a successful journalist, poet, historian, biographer, and autobiographer. During the course of his career, Sandburg won two Pulitzer Prizes, … - Conrad Black
Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, PC, OC, KCSG (born 25 August, 1944, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a former financier and newspaper magnate who was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice on 13 July 2007. He has written several biographies, including one about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Black is Canadian-born but publicly renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 in order to become a life peer in the British House of Lords. - Edmund Morris
Edmund Morris (born May 27, 1940 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a writer best known for his biographies of United States presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Morris received his early education in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His biography "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1980. - Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an award-winning author and historian. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Widely published revelations of plagiarism began in 2002, and her admission that she had previously settled a plagiarism case out of court had an effect on her reputation. While Goodwin steadfastly denied plagiarism, using the word "unintentional" to excuse her unattributed use of others' work, her concurrent position on the Harvard Board of Directors, … - Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (March 1 1880 - January 21 1932) was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. - Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd (born October 5 1949, London) is an English author. Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm and his father had left home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers at the age of 5 and wrote a play about Guy Fawkes when he was 9. He also first realised he was gay at the age of 7. Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, … - Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle" (both of which appear in his book "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon"), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have encouraged authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, … - John Buchan
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, GCMG, GCVO, CH, PC (26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940), was a Scottish novelist, best known for his novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps", and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. - Hunter Davies
Hunter Davies (born 7 January 1936) is a prolific British author, journalist and broadcaster, best known for his books about The Beatles. He wrote a wry column in "Punch" called "Father's Day". Although raised in Carlisle, he was born in Scotland to Scottish parents and considers himself Scottish. Davies is married to the writer Margaret Forster and has a daughter Caitlin Davies who is also an author. Davies also wrote a biography of Alfred Wainwright, … - Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins (Born March 21, 1948) critic, author, director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970. After some freelance work as a music and film critic, in 1974 he started writing his column "Weather Bird" for the Village Voice, which he ended in December 2003. - Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (July 30, 1511 - June 27, 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, known for his famous biographies of Italian artists. - Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose, Ph.D. (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. - Kitty Kelley
Kitty Kelley (born April 4, 1942) is an American investigative journalist and author of several best-selling biographies of celebrities and politicians, most of them unauthorized. Some journalists state that her ability to get sources to reveal information is notable, and her profiles are frequently spiced with unflattering personal anecdotes and details. - A. N. Wilson
Andrew Norman Wilson (born 27 October, 1950), is an English writer, known for his critical biographies, novels and works of popular and cultural history. He is also a columnist for the London "Evening Standard" and an occasional contributor to the "Daily Mail". In 2006, he was the victim of a notable literary hoax played by a rival biographer. - Robert Caro
Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935, New York, New York) is a biographer most noted for his studies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson. After working years as a reporter Caro wrote "The Power Broker" (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses. Then he began the biographical series of the U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, known as "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" (1982, 1990, 2002). - Terry Teachout
Terry Teachout (born 1956, Cape Girardeau, Missouri) is a critic, biographer and blogger. He is the drama critic of "The Wall Street Journal", the music critic of "Commentary", and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Saturday "Wall Street Journal". He blogs at About Last Night along with Chicago-based critic Laura Demanski (who writes under the name "Our Girl in Chicago"), … - Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin (born 20 June 1933) is an English biographer and journalist. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. She was literary editor of the "New Statesman" and of the "Sunday Times", and has written several noted biographies. Her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003. Tomalin's first husband Nicholas Tomalin, a prominent journalist, … - John Hay
John Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln. - J. Randy Taraborrelli
John Randall Taraborrelli (b. February 29, 1956) is a journalist and biographer. He writes mainly about contemporary entertainment and entertainers, and has written biographies about several celebrities. Taraborrelli resides in Los Angeles, California, and as of 2007 he just released an updated biography about Diana Ross. His books are : *"Diana : A Celebration of the Life and Career of Diana Ross" (1985) *"Motown: Hot Wax, … - Antonia Fraser
Lady Antonia Fraser (Pinter), CBE (born August 27, 1932, as Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham) is a British author of history and novels, best known for writing biographies. She is the daughter of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and his wife, the late Elizabeth Harman. Like all her siblings, she became a child convert to the Catholic Church. As the daughter of an earl, Antonia Fraser's title (form of address) is "Lady Antonia"; however, … - Patricia Bosworth
Patricia Bosworth, B.A., (b. April 24, 1933) is an American journalist and biographer. A former faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, she has also been an editor, actress and model. - Ron Chernow
Ronald Chernow (born 1949) is an American biographical author who wrote "Alexander Hamilton", "The House of Morgan", and "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.", among other books. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Valerie, a sociologist. - Hermione Lee
Hermione Lee (born February 29, 1948) is a British critic, biographer and lecturer and Professor of English at the University of Oxford, based at New College. Her first book, "The Novels of Virginia Woolf" was published in 1977, She has also written critical studies of Elizabeth Bowen and Philip Roth. Her Woolf biography won the 1997 British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature. - Garry Wills
Garry Wills (born May 22, 1934 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an author and historian, and a frequent contributor to the "New York Review of Books". In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America," which describes the background and effect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. Wills is an adjunct professor of history, both American and cultural, … - Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS (born Benjamin D'Israeli; 21 December 1804 - 19 April 1881) was a British Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister - the first and thus far only person of Jewish parentage to do so (although Disraeli was baptised in the Anglican Church at 13). - Donald Spoto
Donald Spoto (b. 1941), is a celebrity biographer, Catholic theologian and former monk. He is best known for sensationalist biographies of Hollywood figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn in which, according to one reviewer, 'details, … - Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion, FRSL, (born October 26, 1952) is an English poet, novelist and biographer who is the current Poet Laureate. His poems are known for the insightful way in which they explore loss and desolation. Raised in Stisted near Braintree in Essex, he was educated at Radley. When he was 17, his mother had a riding accident and spent the next nine years in and out of a coma before she died. - Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Bronte. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. - David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is a British writer specializing in the military history of World War II. He is the author of 30 books, including "The Destruction of Dresden" (1963), "Hitler's War" (1977), "Uprising!" (1981), "Churchill's War" (1987), and "Goebbels — Mastermind of the Third Reich" (1996). - Leslie Stephen
Sir Leslie Stephen (November 28, 1832 - February 22, 1904) was an English author, critic and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
|
| |