Alan Hollinghurst

Early life and education

Hollinghurst was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, only child of bank manager James Hollinghurst, who served in the RAF in the Second World War, and his wife, Elizabeth. He attended Dorset's Canford School.

He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1975 and MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on works by three gay writers: Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley. He house-shared at Oxford with future poet laureate Andrew Motion, and was awarded poetry's Newdigate Prize, a year before Motion. In the late 1970s, Hollinghurst lectured at Magdalen, then at Somerville and Corpus Christi. In 1981, he lectured at UCL, and in 1982 joined The Times Literary Supplement, serving as deputy editor from 1985 to 1990.

Hollinghurst discussed his early life and literary influences at length in a rare interview at home in London, published in The James White Review in 1997–98.