Max Egremont is a biographer, historian and novelist who has written studies of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, the Edwardian Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, the soldier and diplomat Major General Sir Edward Spears, East Prussia, the Baltic and the poets of the First World War. He has lived at Petworth House since moving there with his parents in 1953. He is married to the garden designer Caroline Egremont and they have four children.