Alan Hollinghurst born 26 May 1954Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.
He was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of a bank manager.
He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry.
In the late 1970s he became a lecturer at Magdalen, and then at Somerville College and Corpus Christi College. In 1981 he moved on to lecture at the University of London.
In 1981 he joined the Times Literary Supplement and from 1982 to 1995 he was deputy editor.
His acclaimed first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), gives a vivid account of London gay life in the early 1980s through the story of a young aristocrat, William Beckwith, and his involvement with the elderly Lord Nantwich, whose life he saves. It was followed by The Folding Star in 1994, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction).
The Spell (1998), a gay comedy of manners which interweaves the complex relationships between 40-something architect Robin Woodfield, his alcoholic lover Justin, and Justin's ex, timid civil servant Alex, who falls in love with Robin's son Danny. The action moves between the English countryside and London where Danny introduces Alex to ecstasy and the club scene.
Alan Hollinghurst's translation of Racine's play Bajazet was first performed in 1990. His most recent novel, The Line of Beauty (2004), traces a decade of change and tragedy and won the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. It was adapted for BBC Television by Andrew Davies in 2006.A new novel The Stranger's Child will be published in 2011.