“Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe. I’d read him on anyone.”
Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Photography by Geraint Lewis
Adam Sisman is an award-winning writer, editor, historian and consultant, specializing in biography.
His latest work The Secret Life of John le Carré (October 2023) is a coda to his much-praised biography, published in 2015.
In addition to his definitive life of le Carré, Adam has produced full-length biographies of the historians A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper: in each case the first books on their subjects, based on extensive archival research. He has also written a study of literary collaboration, The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge; and the story of the first and arguably the greatest of all biographies, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task. His last book before The Secret Life of John le Carré was about a con man, The Professor and the Parson. Adam’s books have often been shortlisted for prizes, and Boswell’s Presumptuous Task was awarded the US National Books Critics Circle prize for biography.
Besides these, Adam has edited two volumes of letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor, and co-edited a volume of letters of Hugh Trevor-Roper.
“Sisman is the kind of thorough, serious writer who inspires trust”
“Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe. I’d read him on anyone.”
“Sisman is the biographer’s biographer”
About Adam Sisman
Adam is a frequent lecture, and has spoken at numerous events in Britain, Europe and America. In 2022 he gave the Carnegie Lecture at the University of St Andrews, where he is an Honorary Professor. He is also a former President of the Johnson Society of Lichfield, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the Society of Authors, the Biographers’ Club, Two Brydges, Soho House and the Literary Society.
