Shirley-Quirk was born in Liverpool and sang in the choir at Holt High School (today the Childwall Sports & Science Academy).
[1] Shirley-Quirk was a lecturer in chemistry at Acton Technical College until 1957 and played a part in events leading to the formation of Brunel University.
[3] In 1961 Shirley-Quirk was understudy for the role of Gregor Mittenhofer in the British premiere of Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers at the Glyndebourne Festival, and in the following year made his operatic debut in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande as the Doctor.
With the EOG, he made his Covent Garden debut in 1973, creating the multiple roles specially written for him in Death in Venice, in which he appears as various antagonists to the character of Gustav von Aschenbach.
In Shirley-Quirk's wide concert repertory, he was particularly noted as a fine interpreter of Friar Lawrence in Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, and in the solos in Bach's Passions, Handel's oratorios, Haydn's The Creation and The Seasons, Brahms's German Requiem, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (which he recorded with Britten conducting) and Tippett's The Vision of St Augustine (recorded under the composer's baton in 1971).
His vocal art was noted for its "authoritative yet richly communicative" quality, while the gift for musical and verbal detail of a natural Lieder singer and the "oiled-teak smoothness" of his voice took listeners "to profound interpretive depths".