David John Taylor (born 1960) is a British critic, novelist and biographer, who was born and raised in Norwich. He read modern history at St John's College, Oxford.
He has contributed to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, The Spectator, Private Eye and Literary Review, among other publications. He lives in Norwich with his wife, the fiction writer Rachel Hore, and their three children. He was previously a member of the Norwich Writers' Circle.
Taylor received the Whitbread Award for his 2003 biography of George Orwell. His novel Derby Day was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Theodore Dalrymple, reviewing Taylor's Who Is Big Brother?: A Reader's Guide to George Orwell, concluded that "It deals most sensitively with Orwell's multiple ambiguities without trying to fit them into a Procrustean bed. It informs, enlightens, and entertains. It restores one's faith in the value of criticism."
Works
Great Eastern Land: From the Notebooks of David Castell (1986), novel A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the 1980s (1989) Other People: Portraits from the 90's (1990), with Marcus Berkmann Real Life (1992), novel After the War: The Novel and England Since 1945 (1993) English Settlement (1996), novel After Bathing at Baxter's (1997), short stories Trespass (1998), novel Thackeray (1999), biography The Comedy Man (2002), novel Pretext 6: Punk of Me (2002), guest editor Orwell: The Life (2003), biography Kept (2006), novel On the Corinthian Spirit: The Decline of Amateurism in Sport (2006) Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918–1940 (2007) Ask Alice (2009), novel At the Chime of a City Clock (2010), novel Derby Day (2011), novel Secondhand Daylight (2012), novel The Windsor Faction (2013), novel Wrote for Luck (2015), stories. Galley Beggar Press The New Book of Snobs (2016) The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016) Rock and Roll Is Life (2018), novel Lost Girls: Love, War, and Literature, 1939–1951 (2019), collective biography Orwell: The New Life (2023), biography Who Is Big Brother?: A Reader's Guide to George Orwell (2024) Poppyland (2025), short stories
Prizes and honours
1997: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 1998: Longlisted for Booker Prize for his novel Trespass 1999: Winner of a Grinzane Cavour Prize for , the Italian translation of his novel English Settlement 2003: Winner of the Whitbread Prize for biography for Orwell: The Life 2011: Longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his novel Derby Day.News | The Man Booker Prizes 2014: The Windsor Faction winner of the Sidewise Award (tied with Bryce Zabel's Surrounded by Enemies: What If Kennedy Survived Dallas?).
References
External links D. J. Taylor's official website