Nicholas Murray is a British literary biographer, poet and journalist. He has written literary biographies of Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxley, Bruce Chatwin, Andrew Marvell and Matthew Arnold, several poetry collections, and two novels. He is a regular contributor of essays and reviews to magazines. He has given talks at literary festivals (including the Presteigne Festival, and the Bloomsbury Festival), and at universities and other institutions in the UK, Europe and the United States. He has been tutor in biography and creative non-fiction at the City Literary Institute, London.
Nicholas Murray was born in Liverpool in 1952, attended St Mary’s College, Crosby, and graduated in 1973 in English Language and Literature from Liverpool University, where he had been honorary editor of the Guild Gazette, the newspaper of the University of Liverpool Guild of Undergraduates. Nicholas worked as an information officer and journalist for various organisations, including Greater London Council and NCVO. From 1987 he was a freelance journalist. Nicholas was an active member of Bermondsey Labour Party from 1979 to 1987 and was its Assistant Secretary at the time of the Bermondsey by-election in 1983.
Nicholas and his wife Susan Guest (married 1975) founded Rack Press, in 2005, which has published over 50 poets.
1987 Local Government Journalist of the Year Award
1996-7 inaugural Gladys Krieble Delmas Fellow at the British Library Centre for the Book
1997 New York Times Notable Book of the Year for A Life of Matthew Arnold
2002 Fellow of the Welsh Academy
2003 Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Award
2003-2007 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen Mary University, London
2010-2011 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King's College, London.
2013 Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary
2015 Robert Graves Prize (formerly Ruskin Prize) joint second prize
2015 Basil Bunting Award for Poetry, first prize
2018 New Welsh Writing Awards, runner-up
2019 Poetry London Clore Prize, highly commended
2013 and 2014 for Rack Press - Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlets Awards for Publishers
Literary Biographies
Poetry Collections
Fiction
Non-fiction
Contributions to Anthologies