Michael Coveney

I was born in Mile End, East London, in 1948, and grew up in Ilford, Essex, where my passions were, as they are today, music and football. The music side of things became serious at my north London Jesuit grammar school, St Ignatius, where I played in the school orchestra (piano and tympani, not simultaneously) for the concerts and annual operetta at Christmastime. I took a degree in English at Worcester College, Oxford, and started writing theatre reviews on Plays and Players magazine and the Financial Times in 1972. I stayed with the FT until 1989, the last seven years as staff theatre critic, a post I subsequently held on the Observer (1990-97) and the Daily Mail (1997-2004). I have written theatre books since 1990 and continued writing reviews and articles as a freelance on the Guardian, the Independent and Prospect magazine until 2016. I continue to write books as well as theatrical obituaries for the Guardian and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I used to love running on Hampstead Heath, where I live, but I do fast walking instead nowadays. And I support Tottenham Hotspur and FC Halifax Town.