William Boyd is a Scottish descent novelist and screenwriter, born in Accra, Ghana on March 7, 1952. He spent much of his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd experienced the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970, and it had a profound effect on him.

At the age of nine, he attended Gordonstoun School in Moray, Scotland, and later continued his education at Nice University where he received a Diploma of French Studies, and Glasgow University where he earned an MA Hons in English and Philosophy. During his time at Glasgow University, he edited the Glasgow University Guardian.

William Boyd moved to Jesus College, Oxford in 1975 and completed a PhD thesis on Shelley. For a brief period, he worked at the New Statesman magazine as a TV critic.