English writer and journalist Philip Hensher was BOTD in 1965. Born in London to a middle-class family, he was raised in Sheffield. He attended Oxford University, followed by a doctorate at Cambridge University. In the early 1990s, he worked as a clerk in the House of Commons, and published his opera-themed debut novel Other Lulus in 1994. The following year, he wrote the libretto for Thomas Adès‘ opera Powder Her Face, about the scandalous sex life of the Duchess of Argyle. His 1996 novel Kitchen Venom, a political satire set in the Commons featuring rent boys and partially narrated by Margaret Thatcher, won the Somerset Maugham Award, though its unflattering portrait of Tory politicians and indolent clerks led to his being fired. He later gave an interview to a gay magazine, ascribing Prime Minister Gordon Brown‘s attractiveness to his “shagged out look”, which confirmed his political unemployability. He worked as a book critic for The Guardian, The Independent, The Spectator and other newspapers, attempting waspish criticism in the vein of Oscar Wilde. His other novels include The Mulberry Empire, a sprawling historical narrative about the 1838 Anglo-Afghan War, and The Northern Clemency, a 700+ page novel based on his childhood in Sheffield, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He attracted a broader audience with his 2011 novel The King of the Badgers, a forensic portrait of the residents of a English seaside town, featuring a much-quoted gay orgy hosted by the village’s cheese-selling gay couple. In 2009, Hensher entered into a civil partnership with Bangladeshi-born human rights lawyer Zaved Mahmood. Three years later, he published Scenes from Early Life, an auto-fictional account of Mahmood’s early life and the Bangladeshi war of independence. Despite some critical eyebrow-raising about literary appropriation, the book won the 2013 Ondaatje Prize, praised by the judges as “a fascinating feat of ventriloquism”. Hensher lives in London, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. His most recent novel, To Battersea Park, was published in 2024.