Kenyon was born in
Huddersfield,
Yorkshire, in 1931. Educated at
Leighton Park School before completing his National Service with the
Royal Air Force he went on to read history at
Wadham College, Oxford. He also spent a year at
Duke University, North Carolina, on a Rotary Fellowship. On his return to England, and after many unsuccessful applications to the
BBC and up to thirty different newspapers, he finally secured a position as a reporter with the
Bristol Evening Post, where he also contributed as
Gloucestershire cricket correspondent. After three years and a brief stint with the
News Chronicle, he joined the
Manchester Guardian. He married Catherine Bury, of Ireland, in 1961. They divorced in the 1990s, after some of events set out in his memoir of his family's time in
Cahors, France,
A French Affair: A British Family At Home In Southwestern France. While holidaying at Whitegate, Cork Harbour in 1964 he began writing. His first novel,
May You Die in Ireland, was an immediate success. Initially publishing all his crime novels through the
Collins Crime Club, and later through
Macmillan Publishers, he soon became an established and accomplished writer. The
TLS said of his second novel,
The Whole Hog, "Mr. Kenyon's first book,
May You Die in Ireland, was good. The second is excellent." After becoming a visiting lecturer to the
University of Illinois, he returned to England briefly before moving to Southampton,
New York where he taught in the English Department of
Southampton College. He became a United States citizen in 1997. Kenyon died in 2005 after suffering a
heart attack at home in Southampton. ==Novels==