W. Sydney Robinson (born April 16, 1986) is a British biographer and book reviewer. He was educated at Harrow School, the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge, where he was a research associate between 2013 and 2015.
He is best known as the authorized biographer of Academy Award-winning screenplay writer and dramatist Sir Ronald Harwood. The book Speak Well of Me: the authorized biography of Ronald Harwood was published by Oberon Books in May 2017 and charts Harwood's life from his impoverished childhood as part of a large Jewish family in South Africa to his years of success in the West End and Hollywood. Reviewing the book in The Times of London, theatre critic Benedict Nightingale described it as 'engaging' and 'entertaining'. [1] The reviewer in the Jewish Chronicle, however, described it as 'wincingly florid' and 'egregious'. [2]
Robinson has also published biographies of the Victorian investigative journalist W. T. Stead, Muckraker: the scandalous life and times of Britain's first investigative journalist, and a group biography of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Dean Inge, Lord Reith and Sir Arthur Bryant, The Last Victorians: a daring reassessment of four twentieth century eccentrics. Muckraker was awarded the Political Biography of the Year Award at the 2013 Total Politics and Paddy Power Political Book Awards and was included in the 'Books of 2012' selection in The Sunday Times. In a review of The Last Victorians in The Spectator, biographer and historian Philip Ziegler commented that 'Robinson has real talent'. [3]
Robinson has reviewed books in The Sunday Times, the TLS, the Spectator and the Literary Review.
He lives in Northamptonshire and teaches full-time at Oundle. [4]
Giles Lytton Strachey was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Sir Antony Sher was a British actor, writer and theatre director of South African origin. A two-time Laurence Olivier Award winner and a four-time nominee, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 and toured in many roles, as well as appearing on film and television. In 2001, he starred in his cousin Ronald Harwood's play Mahler's Conversion, and said that the story of a composer sacrificing his faith for his career echoed his own identity struggles.
Gwen Harwood was an Australian poet and librettist. Harwood is regarded as one of Australia's finest poets, publishing over 420 works, including 386 poems and 13 librettos. She won numerous poetry awards and prizes, and one of Australia's most significant poetry prizes, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize is named for her. Her work is commonly studied in schools and university courses.
Sir Ronald Harwood was a South African-born British author, playwright, and screenwriter, best known for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
Sir Martin John Gilbert was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He was the author of 88 books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish history including the Holocaust. He was a member of the Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq War.
Kenneth Vivian Rose was a journalist and royal biographer in the United Kingdom. The son of Ada and Jacob Rosenwige, a Bradford Jewish surgeon, Rose was educated at Repton and New College, Oxford. He served in the Welsh Guards 1943–6 and was attached to Phantom, 1945. He did a brief spell of teaching as an Assistant Master at Eton College, 1948. His journalistic career began when he joined the Editorial Staff of the Daily Telegraph, a position he held from 1952 to 1960. He founded and wrote the Albany Column, 1961–97, for the Sunday Telegraph.
Cecil Blanche Woodham-Smith CBE was a British historian and biographer. She wrote four popular history books, each dealing with a different aspect of the Victorian era.
Brenda, Lady Maddox was an American writer and biographer, who spent most of her adult life living and working in the UK, from 1959 until her death. She is best known for her biographies, including of Nora Barnacle, the wife of James Joyce, and for her semi-autobiographical book, The Half-Parent: Living with Other People's Children.
Ronald Chernow is an American writer, journalist, and biographer. He has written bestselling historical non-fiction biographies.
Roland John Perry OAM is an Australian author and historian. His work includes three works of fiction and more than twenty documentary films. His book Monash: The Outsider Who Won the War was awarded the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Melbourne University Publishing Award in 2004 and described as "a model of the biographer's art."
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian, television presenter and author of popular history books and novels, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), Jerusalem: The Biography (2011), The Romanovs 1613–1918 (2016), and The World: A Family History of Humanity (2022), among others.
Georgina Battiscombe was a British biographer, specialising mainly in lives from the Victorian era.
John Julian Timothy Jeal, known as Tim Jeal, is a British biographer of notable Victorians and is also a novelist. His publications include a memoir and biographies of David Livingstone (1973), Lord Baden-Powell (1989), and Sir Henry Morton Stanley (2007).
Mark Bostridge is a British writer and critic, known for his historical biographies.
William Benedict Herbert Nightingale is a British journalist, formerly a regular theatre critic for The Times newspaper. He was educated at Charterhouse and Magdalene College, Cambridge. His first published theatre review was for the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser in 1957, a production of Look Back in Anger by a local amateur group.
Clare Margaret Mulley is an English author and broadcaster.
Garry O'Connor is an English playwright, biographer and novelist.
Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner was the youngest child of Herbert Gardner, 1st Baron Burghclere, and the first wife of Evelyn Waugh. She was one of the Bright Young Things.
Flora Masson RRC was a Scottish-born nurse, suffragist, writer and editor.
Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a 2021 book by British writer Fiona Sampson. The book examines the life of Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and is the first full biography of the poet in over 30 years. Sampson's analysis explores the personal life and political awakening of Barrett Browning.