Hilary Spurling is the author of numerous biographies and has won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She grew up in Bristol and studied at the University of Oxford. From 1964 to 1970 she was Theatre Critic and Literary Editor of the Spectator, and since then she has been a regular book reviewer for the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. In 2016 she won the Biographers’ Club Lifetime Achievement Award. Her latest book, Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time is forthcoming from Knopf.