Gore Vidal was born at the cadet hospital of West Point on October 3, 1925. His father was an instructor there. His father went on to found three airlines and was director of the Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt administration. Gore went to the Sidwell Friends School then St Albans School in Washington DC where he grew up. He spent a great deal of time with his maternal grandfather Senator Thomas Pyor Gore who was a strong isolationist. Gore then went to Exeter, and then volunteered for the army.

The often controversial and always eclectic American writer Gore Vidal is known for his social and political criticism, as well as his novels, plays and poetry. Myra Breckinridge (1968) was perhaps Vidal's most sensationalized novel, but he is also known for his historical fiction and his incisive political essays.

Gore spent many yearas an US expatriate in Italy. That did not prevent him from continuing his analyses of American cultural and political trends. He returned to the US in 2003 and died at the age of 86 iin 2012.