John Grigg

John Grigg FRSL was born in 1924, and educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. In the period between the two (towards the end of World War Two) he served in Holland and Germany with the Grenadier Guards. After editing a monthly magazine he became a columnist on the Guardian (1960-9), after which, apart from a spell on the staff of The Times while he was writing a volume in the paper's official history (Vol 6, The Thomson Years), he worked as a freelance journalist.

In his lifetime he published three volumes of a projected five-volume life of Lloyd George: The Young Lloyd George, Lloyd George: The People's Champion and Lloyd George: From Peace to War. For the last two volumes he was awarded, respectively, the Whitbread Prize and the Wolfson Prize. As well as 1943 he also published a short life of Nancy Astor. He was chairman of the London Library committee for the period 1986-91 and from 1996 until the end of his life was president of the Library. John Grigg died in December 2001.