He has written widely on German literature, intellectual history and religion and is known particularly for his award-winning extensive biography of Goethe (of which two of a projected three volumes have been published).
[2] Boyle was educated at King's School, Worcester, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was awarded BA and PhD degrees.
George Steiner has called him a 'critic of vivacious perspicacity' and compares the scope of his work to "Lord Bullock's double portraits of Hitler and Stalin, Richard Holmes's Coleridge, David Cairns's Berlioz, Michael Holroyd's Shaw, Richardson's Picasso", whilst The New York Times Book Review describes his biography as a 'remarkable achievement', adding that 'there is nothing comparable to this study in any language'.
In the letter, Boyle responded to a Big Read article ("Braced for the fall") published on 5 July 2017.
Boyle opined that "this rhetoric inverts the truth", as "it is the Europhobes who shut themselves away in self-gratifying fantasies, while the Remainers know that real life is possible only through interaction with others".