Fiona MacCarthy established herself as one of the leading writers of biography in Britain with her widely acclaimed book Eric Gill, published in 1989. Byron: Life and Legend was described by A. N. Wilson as 'a flawless triumph' and William Morris, described by A. S. Byatt as 'large, delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail', won the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Award. MacCarthy received the 2011 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography for The Last Pre-Raphaelite. She was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2009. Her most recent book is Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus, which was Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2019.