Michael is an art historian, curator and author of more than a dozen books. These include Artists’ Letters: Leonardo da Vinci to David Hockney, Studio Voices: Art and Life in 20th-Century Britain, The St Ives Artists: A Biography of Place and Time, and 100 Ideas that Changed Art. As Goodison Fellow at National Life Stories, he researched the Artists’ Lives archive and curated the exhibition In Their Own Words at The Lightbox, Woking. In 2018–21, he was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter University, and in 2022 he co-curated Living the Landscape: Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and the Artists of St Ives at Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen. He lives in Cornwall.