Dyer was born and raised in Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a sheet metal worker father and a school dinner lady mother.

[4] Dyer is the author of the following novels: The Colour of Memory (1989), The Search (1993), Paris Trance (1998) and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2009).

He wrote a critical study of John Berger – Ways of Telling – and two collections of essays: Anglo-English Attitudes and Working the Room.

[citation needed] Dyer has written the following non-fiction titles: But Beautiful (on jazz); The Missing of the Somme (on the memorialisation of the First World War); Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence; Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It; The Ongoing Moment (on photography); Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker); and Broadsword Calling Danny Boy (about Brian G. Hutton's 1968 film Where Eagles Dare).

[5] He is the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney.