Kenneth Tynan Author

Kenneth Tynan was born in April 1927 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he left to become drama critic of the Evening Standard in 1951. He moved to the Observer in 1954, where he wrote on theatre every week until he left in 1962 to join Laurence Olivier's new National Theatre as its Literary Manager - and later Consultant. He died in July 1980. He was also a theatre producer - of shows ranging from Oh! Calcutta to Soldiers - and a prolific feature writer: a selection of his Profiles is published by NHB. Also published since his death are his Diaries and Letters.

Dominic Shellard is the author of Kenneth Tynan: A Life (2003), 'an excellent biography, so cool, so impeccably researched, and so often very moving' (Spectator).