Philip Michael Hensher FRSL (born 1965[1]) is an English novelist, critic and journalist.
Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. He is the nephew of the 1970s film star Robin Askwith.[2] He did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford before attending Cambridge, where he was awarded a PhD for work on 18th century painting and satire. Early in his career he worked as a clerk in the House of Commons, from which he was fired over the content of an interview he gave to a gay magazine.[1] He has published a number of novels, is a regular contributor to Granta, and he is a columnist and book reviewer for newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent.
Since 2005 he has taught creative writing at the University of Exeter. He has edited new editions of numerous classic works of English Literature, such as those by Charles Dickens and Nancy Mitford, and has served as a judge for the Booker Prize.
In 2006, Philip Hensher was listed as one of the 100 most influential LGBT people in Britain,[3] and in 2003 as one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British Novelists.[1]
In 2008, Hensher's semi-autobiographical novel The Northern Clemency was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
He wrote the libretto for Thomas Adès' scandalous 1995 opera Powder Her Face. This has been his only musical collaboration to date.
His early writings have been characterized as having an "ironic, knowing distance from their characters" and "icily precise skewerings of pretension and hypocrisy"[1] His historical novel The Mulberry Empire "echos with the rhythm and language of folk tales" while "play[ing] games" with narrative forms.[1]
Among Hensher's novels are:
He has also published a short story collection: