P. N. Furbank

Philip Nicholas Furbank FRSL (; 23 May 1920 – 27 June 2014) was an English biographer, critic and academic. His most significant biography was the well-received life of his friend E. M. Forster.

Career Born in Cranleigh in 1920, Furbank, after having attended Reigate Grammar School, entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After graduating with a First in English, he served in the army. He became a corporal in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and was in Italy in 1945. He returned to Emmanuel as a teaching Fellow in 1947. and also of the mathematician Alan Turing, whose literary executor he became.

In 1953 Furbank moved to London, where he worked as an editor and a librarian, and contributed book reviews to The Listener. In 1960 he married the poet and critic Patricia Beer. The marriage was dissolved by 1964, when she remarried. In 1972 Furbank became a professor of the Open University,

Works Furbank's best known work is his E. M. Forster: A Life. and Behalf (1999), a book on political thought.