Huntford, the son of Lithuanian parents (originally "Horowitz") living in South Africa, has stated that he was educated at the University of Cape Town and Imperial College London.
[1] In an interview with the glaciologist Charles Swithinbank, he claimed "his father was an Army officer and his mother was from Russia"; Ranulph Fiennes, however, observed that, during his own research on Captain Scott – in the course of which he presented reviews of, and himself assessed, Huntford's biographical work – he was unable to corroborate any of Huntford's own claims regarding his background, which presented his father as "some English colonial gentleman given to romantic travels in pre-Soviet Russia".
[1] Huntford's author biography, used in publicity for his books, states that he worked for the United Nations in Geneva, then as a journalist for The Spectator.
[2] Huntford's other books include Sea of Darkness, The Sayings of Henrik Ibsen and Two Planks and a Passion: The dramatic history of skiing.
His polemical The New Totalitarians is a critique of socialism in Sweden, written from the point of view of western political culture.