Piers Brendon was born in Cornwall and educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Winston Churchill: A Brief Life, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s and The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.

He contributes widely to the national press; gives lectures, popular as well as academic; and does work for television on both sides of the camera, notably on such series as The Churchills and The Windsors, which was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.

Formerly Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre, he a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.