Piers Brendon FRSL is a British writer, known for historical and biographical works. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history. He earned a Ph.D. degree with his thesis, Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement, which was published, with much modification, in 1974.

From 1965 to 1978, he was lecturer in history, then principal lecturer and head of department, at what is now Anglia Ruskin University. From 1979 onwards he has worked as a free-lance writer of books, journalism and for television. From 1995 he has been a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and was keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre from 1995 to 2001,