Robert Ferguson was born in Blackpool in 1948. After completing Norwegian studies at University College in London, he took up a state scholarship in Norway in1983, and has since then lived in Oslo.

Ferguson is an award-winning dramatist and has translated and adapted several of Ibsen’s plays for the BBC. Apart from Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography he is also the author of two other highly acclaimed biographies, Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller: A Life.