Born in Brockton, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1932, Brenda Lee Power Murphy graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature and also studied at the London School of Economics. She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D.H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Rosalind Franklin have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize. Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales, where she and her husband, Sir John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren. Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2016. (from Wikipedia)