Born in Paddington, London, his writings were published using the name A. E. Dyson. Dyson had realised he was gay during his teens, and regarded prejudice against homosexuals as parallel to the persecution of other minority groups, to be fought like anti-semitism or racism. He went to Essendine Elementary School from where he won a scholarship to Sloane School, Chelsea. During this time he had to avoid physical exertion because of a heart murmur. He also had a stammer which he claimed was cured by a quack.
He took a profound interest in the problems of religion and was converted to Christianity when he wandered by chance into a church and heard an evangelical sermon. During the Second World War he was declared unfit for the Army and worked for two years as a clerk in the Ministry of Food.
He went to Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1949. While a student at Cambridge he was a member of evangelical Christian groups and took the first steps towards ordination. However, he lost his faith in his final year when he studied for a paper called The English Moralists. After his degree then took up research at Cambridge. In 1955 he was appointed as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of North Wales, Bangor.
After the Wolfenden Report was published in 1957 he reacted to a letter from Dr R. D. Reid of Wells, published in the Spectator in January 1958, by drafting a letter to The Times which was published on 7th. March 1958. The resulting correspondence brought those who supported the Wolfenden Report together so that the Homosexual Law Reform Society was formally founded on 12th. May 1958. In June 1958 Allan Horsfall offered help to Tony Dyson. This led to Alan Horsfall setting up the North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee. Tony Dyson became the Vice-Chairman of the HLRS in London. His work led to the 1967 U.K law which no longer made private homosexual relations a criminal offense.
With J. B. Priestley, Tony Dyson set up the Albany Trust to serve the needs of gay people. Tony Dyson sent hundreds of letters from his home in Bangor to Members of Parliament and other famous people asking for their support. During this time he met Cliff Tucker, a senior executive at British Petroleum and a Labour Party councillor in inner London. They lived together for 35 years until Cliff Tucker's death, in 1993.
In 1959 Tony Dyson teamed up with Brian Cox, a friend from Cambridge, to start the literary journal Critical Quarterly. Tony Dyson was able to use the skills in publicity obtained when working for he HLRS to promote the journal and it acquired 5300 subscribers and an international reputation.
In the early 1960s Tony Dyson moved to the new University of East Anglia at Norwich where he was later appointed as Reader. However, he preferred to live with Cliff Tucker in London and so he changed his employment to part-time so that he only needed to spend two days a week at Norwich.
In 1969 Tony Dyson and Brian Cox published a pamphlet which criticised the excesses of progressive education and the introduction by the Labour Party of comprehensive schools. Tony Dyson called this a Black Paper in contrast to the Government's White Papers. Four more Black Papers followed. The Black Papers caused a furore at the time but the main political parties latter adopted much of what they proposed as policies.
In the early 1970s he suffered from a non-malignant tumour in the jaw and had several major operations which left him scarred and made eating difficult. He ceased his work with the Critical Quarterly. Throughout his life he moved in and out of the Anglican Church. In 1973 he started the quarterly journal Christian.
In 1982 he took early retirement from the University of East Anglia. He was ill with leukaemia for four years until he died after falling down stairs when living alone in London. He died c30th. July, 2002, in London, and was found on 1st. August.
