Michael Bird is an independent art historian and author of more than a dozen books, including This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and Its Artists (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Studio Voices: Art and Life in Twentieth-century Britain (Lund Humphries/British Library, 2018), The St Ives Artists: A Biography of Place and Time (Lund Humphries, 2nd edn 2016), and monographs on Sandra Blow, Lynn Chadwick and Bryan Wynter. In 2016, he was Goodison Fellow at the British Library, researching the oral history of modern art in the National Life Stories’ ‘Artists’ Lives’ archive, and in 2018–21 he was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Exeter. His journalism has appeared in Tate Etc, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, The Times and many other publications. Media work includes features for BBC Radio on Peter Lanyon and Alfred Wallis, and regular contributions to radio and TV arts programmes. His books for children include Dear Vincent (Thames & Hudson, 2024) and Vincent’s Starry Night and Other Stories: A Children’s History of Art (Laurence King, 2016), which has been translated into seventeen languages. He lectures widely and is currently Associate Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and co-director of the Holburne Project, working with young composers at the Royal Academy of Music and Holburne Museum, Bath.