William Boyd
William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana in 1952 to Scottish parents and spent his early years in West Africa, experiencing the Biafran War.
He attended Gordonstoun school in Scotland before studying at Nice, Glasgow, and Oxford universities, earning a PhD on Shelley.
After teaching English literature at Oxford, he chose writing over academia following the success of his first novel.
Selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 1983, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed CBE in 2005.
Boyd divides his time between Chelsea and his château in Bergerac, France.
