Matthew Dennison

Matthew Dennison is the author of ten critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including a best-selling biography of Elizabeth II. His books have been adapted for radio, inspired a new ballet and translated into more than twenty languages. His eleventh book, an account of the Bloomsbury Group, will be published in May 2027. He is a journalist and broadcaster, and writes a weekly column in Country Life about the lives of saints.

He read English at Christ Church, Oxford, as Douglas Jerrold Scholar, and afterwards the History of Decorative Arts at the University of Glasgow. His thesis – on Sevres porcelain hyacinth-growing vessels of the mid-1750s – was subsequently published in abridged form by Country Life. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.

Matthew's first biography, The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2007 and became a Hatchards' number one bestseller. In 2019, it inspired a new ballet by Cathy Marston for Northern Ballet – ‘Victoria’ – and was reissued by Head of Zeus. Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia was published in 2010, followed in 2012 by The Twelve Caesars, a Daily Mail Book of the Week, acclaimed by The Spectator as “magnificent”. In 2013, William Collins published Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions, described by Hugo Vickers in The Times as “a tremendous coup”, the first of a series of short biographies Matthew has written, which also includes lives of children’s authors Beatrix Potter (Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter), Kenneth Grahame (Eternal Boy: The Life of Kenneth Grahame) and Roald Dahl (Teller of the Unexpected: The Life of Roald Dahl), the last a Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Matthew’s biography of Vita Sackville-West, Behind the Mask, was published by William Collins in October 2014 and became a ‘Book of the Year’ in The Times, The Independent, The Observer, and The Spectator. Collins also published Matthew’s biography of George II’s wife, Caroline of Ansbach, The First Iron Lady, described ahead of publication by The Times as "scintillating". His fourth and most recent royal biography was a life of Elizabeth II, The Queen, published in 2021 and revised and reissued following Her Majesty's death.

In the summer of 2017, Matthew wrote the afterword to ‘A Note of Explanation’, a short story written by Vita Sackville-West for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, published for the first time by the Royal Collection.

Matthew is a regular contributor to Country Life and The Daily Telegraph. Television credits include ‘Queen Victoria’s Children’ and ‘Royal Cousins at War’ for BBC 2, ‘The Queen’s Longest Reign’ for BBC 1 and, most recently, 'Emperor' for Channel 5. He is a former Costa Prize judge.