Biography
A. A. Gill is a respected writer and a fearsome critic. He is the TV and restaurant critic for The Sunday Times and a contributing editor to "GQ" magazine, "Vanity Fair" and "Australian Gourmet Traveller". He suffers from a severe form of dyslexia and, consequently, all of his works are written by dictation.
He was born Adrian Anthony Gill and uses A. A. Gill as a byline. He was educated at the progressive independent St Christopher School in Hertfordshire and would later recall his experiences at the school for his book The Angry Island. After St Christopher, he moved to London to study at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the Slade School of Art, nurturing ambitions to be an artist.
He began his writing career in his thirties, writing art reviews for little magazines. His first piece for Tatler, in 1991, was an account of being in a detox clinic, written under a pseudonym. In 1993 he moved to The Sunday Times, where he quickly established himself as a competent and talented individual.
Adrian's razor sharp critiques and evocative turns of phrase have often landed him in trouble. It has been remarked that everyone finds Adrian charming except the vast swathes of the population he has offended: the Welsh; the Manx; animal-lovers (he shot a baboon); Clare Balding (he called her a "dyke on a bike"); historian Mary Beard (who he said "should be kept away from television cameras altogether"), and Gordon Ramsay.
His books include two novels, "Sap Rising" and "Starcrossed", two travel books, "AA Gill Is Away" and "Previous Convictions", as well as "The Angry Island" and "Paper View".
In 2012, he wrote another book, entitled The Golden Door: Letter to America. The book is a love letter to the creation, culture and super-mammaried Playmates of America, based partly on scrapbooks and stories about distant cousins who emigrated from Yorkshire to Colorado, and partly on spoony memories of his own youthful sojourns Stateside.
Gill's first wife was the author Cressida Connolly, daughter of the writer Cyril Connolly. They later divorced. His second wife, whom he married in 1990, was Amber Rudd, a financial journalist and Conservative MP for Hastings and Rye, who appeared in his column as "The Silver-spoon". They have two children, Flora and Alasdair.
He now has a long-term relationship with Nicola Formby, editor-at-large of the Tatler, for whom he left Rudd in 1995, who appears in his column as "The Blonde". They have twins, Edith and Isaac, born in March 2007.
Adrian is represented in London, England by Useful Talent.
