Talk:Adam Sisman

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Adam Sisman has written six books, five of them published in the USA as well as in Britain; and edited or co-edited three volumes of letters. Various of Sisman’s works have been translated into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Arabic and Japanese.

His first book, a life of the historian A.J.P Taylor, was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. Like his subsequent biographies of Hugh Trevor-Roper and John le Carré, this was a work of original scholarship: in each case the first book of its kind on the subject.

His second book, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and awarded the US National Books Critics Circle prize for biography. His biography of John le Carré was shortlisted for the international PEN prize for biography.

Sisman’s books have been praised by critics as much for their prose as for their research. Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, for example, was reviewed by Philip Hensher as “fabulously entertaining, deft and witty”. Diana Athill found The Friendship “unputdownable”. Noel Malcolm wrote of Sisman’s life of Hugh Trevor-Roper, “This is a fine and serious biography which, on page after page, has made me laugh out loud. A.N. Wilson “embarrassed myself by uncontrollable guffaws” while reading The Professor and the Parson. “Mr. Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe,” wrote Dwight Garner in the New York Times: “I’d read him on anyone.”

Sisman has contributed numerous book reviews and feature articles to such newspapers as The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times; and to journals such as The Spectator and the Literary Review. He also writes regularly for Slightly Foxed.

He has been interviewed on radio programmes around the world, including NPR’s “All Things Considered”, BBC’s “Start the Week”, “Front Row”, “Open Book”, “Head to Head”, “Meet the Author”, & “Last Word”, and appeared on television on BBC, Sky Arts, and C-Span. In 2022 he was filmed at length for a forthcoming ITN television series on spying.

Sisman has undertaken two publicity tours of the United States, and often spoken at universities, literary festivals, and other events in Britain and America. In 1998 he was a Visiting Fellow at Hawthornden Castle, near Edinburgh. He has been President of the Johnson Society of Lichfield and the Boswell Society of Auchinleck. In 2013 he was a guest speaker in an all-day event organized by King’s College, London, to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first meeting between Boswell and Johnson. In 2014 he was a speaker at an international seminar on biography at the International University Mendendez Pelayo (UIMP). More recently he was the guest of honour at the “Adaptation” film festival in County Sligo. In 2019 he spoke at conference in Copenhagen on Patrick Leigh Fermor’s work, attended by the Queen of Denmark, and was later presented to the Queen. In 2022 he gave the annual Carnegie Lecture at the University of St Andrews.

Sisman has been a judge for various literary prizes, including the Whitbread (now known as the Costa) Prize. In 2013, he was one of the assessors distributing awards on behalf of the Society of Authors.

In 2015 Sisman was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2022 he was made an honorary professor at St Andrews. 79.173.142.10 (talk) 16:09, 13 June 2023 (UTC)