John Berger, novelist, painter, and art historian, was born in London in 1926. After serving in the British army from 1944 to 1946, he attended the Central School of Art and the Chelsea School of Art in London. He taught drawing from 1948 to 1955, and continued to paint all of his life. In 1952 Berger began writing for London's New Statesman, and quickly became an influential Marxist art critic. Beginning with his first novel in 1958, Berger also produced a significant body of fiction, including G. (1972), winner of England's Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. John Berger died in 2017.