Andrew Lycett

Andrew Lycett is an author of non-fiction books, particularly biographies. He was educated at Oxford University, where he read Modern History and edited Cherwell, the student newspaper.

As a child he lived in East Africa, and later in Yorkshire and in Dublin. After university, he was a development worker in newly independent Bangladesh. In the mid-1970s he returned to Africa and later lived in the Middle East, working in both these areas as a foreign correspondent, mainly for The Times and Sunday Times. Over a period of twenty years he edited several magazines and other publications dealing mainly with the Arab world.

As a result of visits to Libya, he wrote his first book, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution (with his Sunday Times colleague, the late David Blundy). Since the early 1990s, he has concentrated on biographies. His Ian Fleming, published in 1995, is the definitive life of James Bond’s creator. His subsequent books have been enthusiastically received. They include lives of Rudyard Kipling (1999), Dylan Thomas (2003), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2007) and Wilkie Collins (2013).

He still regularly writes articles and book reviews for newspapers and magazines. But his main focus is now books. Currently living in North London, he appears regularly at literary festivals round Britain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and sits on the management committee of the Society of Authors.