Edward Lucie-Smith attended King's School, Canterbury, and Merton College, Oxford University in England. Following a 10-year career in advertising, he became a freelance journalist and broadcaster. He has been the curator of a number of exhibitions in Britain and the United States. Lucie-Smith was associated with The Group which was an informal association of writers, mostly poets, set up in London in 1955 by Philip Hobsbaum. In 1965 the Group was restructured into a more formal organization called the Writers' Workshop. Since then, he has been a regular contributor to the monthly magazine Art Review, and also authored essays and articles for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Mail on Sunday, The Listener, The Spectator, New Statesman, Evening Standard, Encounter, London Magazine, and Illustrated London News. He has been a prolific author with over 100 books, mostly on art, but also including biography, and a historical novel. His photography is represented in the National Portrait Gallery, London, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Butler Institute of American Art. In 2004 Edward Lucie-Smith wrote the book Philip Pearlstein for Il Polittico, Rome. His lecture takes place in conjunction with Philip Pearlstein: Naked Strangers on the Wall at the Tweed Museum from March 23 to October 15, 2006.