The Bradbury, M. mss. III consists of scholarly, fictional, and televisual works, including manuscript drafts and typescripts that reflect Sir Malcolm Bradbury's (1932-2000) wide-ranging career as an academic, fiction writer, and cultural critic. Born in 1932, Bradbury studied English at University College, Leicester and then Queen Mary College, University of London, where he received an MA in 1955. Between the years of 1955 and 1958, Bradbury taught at the University of Manchester and at Indiana University. Alongside a series of adult-education teaching roles in subsequent years, he received his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Manchester in 1962.

Bradbury focused his academic career largely on the (British and American) novel. He produced literary criticism on authors such as Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster, and F.Scott Fitzgerald. He was also interested in novels about university life, and gained fame for producing one of his own: The History Man (1975). Bradbury wrote five other novels, including Rates of Exchange (1983) (shortlisted for the Booker prize) and Cuts (1987). He also scripted several English television shows, including Anything More Would Be Greedy (1989), The Gravy Train (1990), and its 1991 sequel. Friends and correspondents of note include David Lodge and Bradbury's former students Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.