George Macaulay Trevelyan was born on February 16, 1876, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, younger brother of the politician Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan (1870-1958).

He was a British historian, public educator, and conservationist. He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the secret society, the Cambridge Apostles. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1898-1903). He lectured at Cambridge until 1903 when he left academic life to become a full-time writer. Trevelyan also edited a progressive journal Independent Review. He became active as a conservationist, successfully urging the preservation of the Ashridge estate by the National Trust in 1925. From 1927 to 1943, he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge and served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. After he retired, he served as Chancellor of Durham University (1950-1958). He was the author of many books, e.g., "England in the Age of Wycliffe" (1899), "England under the Stuarts" (1904), "The Life of John Bright" (1913), and "An Autobiography and Other Essays" (1949). His great work was his Garibaldi trilogy (1907–1911), which established his reputation as the outstanding literary historian of his generation.

In 1904, he married Janet Penrose Ward (1879–1956). He died on July 21, 1962, in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.