Nigel Hamilton (author) - Biographer

Biographer

After moving to Suffolk, Hamilton published his first major biography in 1978, The Brothers Mann, recording the lives of the German novelists Heinrich and Thomas Mann which received high praise in Britain and the United States and was translated into several languages.

In 1981, Hamilton published the first volume of his official life of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Monty: The Making of a General, 1887–1942, which established Hamilton’s international reputation as a military historian and biographer. This work was followed by Monty: Master of the Battlefield, 1942–1944, and Monty: The Field Marshal, 1944–1976. The Making of a General won the Whitbread Award for Biography in 1981, and the Templer Medal for Best Contribution to Military History in 1986.

Working with Robin Whitby, a Cambridge colleague, in 1987, Hamilton founded Biografia Publishers and The Biography Bookshop in Covent Garden, London to promote the field of biography.

In 1988, Hamilton moved to the U.S. to undertake a book on the life of former President John F. Kennedy and he was named the John F. Kennedy Scholar at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a visiting professor of history. The first volume of his biography was published by Random House in the fall of 1992 as JFK: Reckless Youth. The New York Times Book Review welcomed it as "rich, gripping... a book not only about a remarkable young John F. Kennedy but also about American democracy’s own still reckless age." It became a New York Times bestseller and film rights were sold to Hearst Entertainment, who turned it into a television mini-series, JFK: Reckless Youth, which starred Patrick Dempsey as the young JFK.

In 1994, Hamilton moved back to the UK, where he became Visiting Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Professor of Biography at De Montfort University, in Leicester. He set up the British Institute of Biography and led Royal Holloway’s bid to create the first public and academic center for biography in Britain, the Biorama Project.

Hamilton again returned to the U.S. to undertake a two volume biographical work on the life of former President, Bill Clinton. The first volume was published as Bill Clinton: An American Journey in 2003 while the second volume, Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency (taking Clinton’s life up to 1996), followed in 2007. Both were lauded in the press and received outstanding reviews.

After having become Senior Fellow at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and a visiting scholar at both Georgetown University and George Washington University in 2005, Hamilton returned to his first love, the study of the art of biography. He published Biography: A Brief History in 2007, to high acclaim from The New York Times and followed in 2008 with How To Do Biography: A Primer, based on his many years of teaching and life writing, which received additional praise for Hamilton's work on the art of biography.

Hamilton's followed with a modern version of the classic history of the great emperors of Rome, The Twelve Caesars, written early in the second century A.D. by the biographer and historian Suetonius. Published by Yale University Press in September 2010, American Caesars records the lives of the last twelve U.S. presidents, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to George W. Bush, and is Hamilton’s most ambitious work to date.

Hamilton also reviews books for The Boston Sunday Globe, The Journal of Military History and the London Review of Books, among others. He has had op-ed pieces and articles in the New York Times, the London Independent, and the Times Higher Education, among others. Hamilton has contributed to dozens of television documentary programs and lectures at many universities around the world on his work.