Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 author, known for biographies

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

, including one of Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports and the Kinsey...

, and books of social history

Social history

Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...

 on the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 nanny

Nanny

A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...

 and public school system. For his autobiography, Half an Arch, he received the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography

J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography

The J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography is awarded annually by the English Centre for International PEN to given to a literary autobiography of excellence, written by an author of British nationality and published during the preceding year. The winner receives £1,000 and a silver pen. The winner...

 in 2005. He has also written novels and children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

.

He was brought up in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and educated at Bryanston

Bryanston School

Bryanston School is a co-educational independent school for both day and boarding pupils in Blandford, north Dorset, England, near the village of Bryanston. It was founded in 1928...

 and Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

. As a boy, he was one of Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

's favourites and he and his family provided the names for the characters in The Little Sweep

The Little Sweep

The Little Sweep is an opera for children in three scenes by the English composer Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Eric Crozier.- Let's Make an Opera! :...

. His involvement with Britten is described in John Bridcut's Britten's Children.

He subsequently worked in advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 and publishing

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

.

Robert Gathorne-Hardy and Edward Gathorne-Hardy were his uncles.

Works

• Chameleon (1967)
• The Office (1970)
• The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny (1972) as The Unnatural History of the Nanny (US)
• Jane's Adventures In and Out of the Book (1972)
• Jane's Adventures on the Island of Peeg (1972)
• Jane's Adventures In A Balloon (1975)
• The Airship Ladyship Adventure (1975)
• The Public School Phenomenon, 597–1977 (1977) as Old School Tie – Phenomenon of English Public School (US)
• Cyril Bonhamy vs Madam Big (1981)
• Love, Sex, Marriage and Divorce (1981)
• Cyril Bonhamy and the Great Drain Robbery (1983)
• Doctors: The Lives and Work of GPs (1984) (non-fiction)
• The Centre Of The Universe Is 18 Baedekerstrasse (1985)
• Cyril Bonhamy and Operation Ping (1985)
• The City Beneath The Skin (1986)
• Cyril Of The Apes (1987)
• The Munros' New House (1987)
• A Life of Gerald Brenan (1994)
• Particle Theory (1996)
• Bookseller's War, Heywood and Anne Hill (1997) (letters, editor)
• Alfred C. Kinsey. Sex the Measure of All Things. A Biography (1998)
• Half An Arch (2004) (autobiography)

External links