Peter Harry "Paul" Bailey FRSL (16 February 1937 – 27 October 2024) was a British novelist and critic, as well as a biographer of Cynthia Payne and Quentin Crisp.
[1] He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1953 and worked as an actor between 1956 and 1964, during which he adopted the name Paul Bailey.
[5] Despite his melancholy and fear, Harry entertains the nurses with recitations of some of the favourite poems he has memorised in a lifetime of reading.
[7] Bailey was also known as a literary critic, and contributor to The Guardian[8] and in 2001 headed an all-male "alternative" judging panel for the Orange Prize.
[9] In 2003 he joined the staff on Kingston University's creative writing course, where he continued to teach as Senior Distinguished Research Fellow until his death.