Michael Coveney was born on July 24, 1948 in England. He was educated at St. Ignatius College, Stanford Hill and Worcester College, Oxford. After graduation, he worked as a script reader for the Royal Court Theatre and from 1972 he contributed theatre reviews to the Financial Times. He was deputy editor (1973 - 75) and editor (1975-78) of Plays and Players magazine[1] and theatre critic and deputy arts editor of the Financial Times throughout the 1980s. He was theatre critic for The Observer from 1990 until he joined the Daily Mail in 1997, following the death of Jack Tinker. He remained at the Daily Mail until 2004. He is Chief Critic of the leading theatre website WhatsOnStage.com. He is the author of The Citz, a history of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre 1990 and Maggie Smith: A Bright Particular Star, 1993. He has also published a biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and a revised edition of his biography of Maggie Smith will be published in 2015.