Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist. He was born on May 26, 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of a bank manager. He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, collected the dole, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry. Hollinghurst is the author of four novels: 'The Swimming Pool Library' (1988), 'The Folding Star (1994)' 'The Spell (1998)' and 'The Line of Beauty' (2004), the latter of which was awarded the 2004 Man Booker Prize for outstanding fiction written in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.