Richard Holmes
Biographer and academic
Richard Holmes is a British biographer known for his studies of Romantic-era figures such as Shelley and Coleridge. He also wrote The Age of Wonder and Falling Upwards.
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British Born 1945 in London, United Kingdom
About Richard Holmes
Richard Holmes was born in London in 1945 and is a British author and academic. His first book, Shelley: The Pursuit, appeared in 1974. He went on to write a two-part life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Coleridge: Early Visions won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Dr Johnson & Mr Savage won the 1993 James Tait Black Prize. The Age of Wonder explores the scientists of the Romantic age and won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. His book about ballooning, Falling Upwards, was named a book of the year by seven newspapers in 2013. He has also written about his own approach to biography in Footsteps, Sidetracks and This Long Pursuit. Holmes was awarded the OBE in 1992 and became Professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia in 2001. His homes are in London and Norwich, shared with the novelist Rose Tremain.