He did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford,[7] before attending Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a PhD in 1992[2] for work on 18th-century painting and satire.
[8] He has published a number of novels, and is a regular contributor, columnist and book reviewer for newspapers and weeklies such as The Guardian, The Spectator, The Mail on Sunday and The Independent.
Hensher wrote the libretto for Thomas Adès's opera Powder Her Face (1995) and in 2015 he edited The Penguin Book of the British Short Story.
Hensher's early works of fiction were characterized as having an "ironic, knowing distance from their characters" and "icily precise skewerings of pretension and hypocrisy".
[8] His historical novel The Mulberry Empire "echoes with the rhythm and language of folk tales" while "play[ing] games" with narrative forms.