Arnold Joseph Toynbee was born on April 14, 1889, in London, England.

He was an English historian, philosopher of history, and author. He was educated at Winchester College, Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1911) and briefly at the British School at Athens. He was a tutor at Balliol College (1912-1915) and professor of Byzantine and modern Greek language, literature, and history at London University (1919–1924). From 1921 to 1922, he was the Manchester Guardian correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War. From 1926 until his retirement in 1956, he held the posts of research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Toynbee was the author of numerous publications, e.g., "The Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation" (1915) and "British View of the Ukrainian Question" (1916). In his best-known work, "A Study of History" (12 vols., 1934–1961), he examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1947 and was a regular commentator on BBC. In 1937, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and, in 1956, he was appointed a Companion of Honour. He reached a level of public recognition not matched by any other historian of his time.

In 1913, he married Rosalind Murray (1890–1967). They divorced in 1946, and he remarried Veronica Marjorie Boulter (1894–1980) in 1946. He died on October 22, 1975, in York, England.