David John Taylor (born 1960) is a critic, novelist, and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John’s College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his life of George Orwell.
He lives in Norwich and contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman and The Spectator among other publications.
He is married to the novelist Rachel Hore, and together they have three sons.
Books in order of publication:
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
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