He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred books, his subjects gradually shifting around the late 1960s from mostly literature to mostly art.

[1][3] After serving in the Royal Air Force as an education officer and working as a copywriter,[3] Lucie-Smith became a full-time writer (as well as anthologist and photographer).

A prolific writer, he has written more than one hundred books in total on a variety of subjects, chiefly art history as well as biographies and poetry.

[5] In recent years Lucie-Smith has been promoting drawings attributed to Francis Bacon owned by Italian journalist Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino.

[6] His uncle Euan Lucie-Smith was one of the first mixed-heritage infantry officers in a regular British Army regiment, and the first killed in World War I.