Byng grew up in the village of Abbots Worthy in Hampshire. He is the second son of the 8th Earl of Strafford and Jennifer May, brother to the author Lady Georgia Byng, and through his stepfather, Sir Christopher Bland, the former Chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation, British Telecom and Royal Shakespeare Company, he is the half-brother of print journalist and now Deputy Editor of The Independent newspaper, Archie Bland.
Byng was educated at Winchester College, a boarding independent school for boys in the cathedral city of Winchester in Hampshire in Southern England, followed by the University of Edinburgh.
Whitney McVeigh is the daughter of a socialite mother and her father is an American banker. Byng and McVeigh separated in 2001 and Byng has since married Elizabeth Sheinkman with whom he has two children, Ivy and Nathaniel. After graduating, he convinced Scottish publisher Stephanie Wolfe Murray to give him a job at Canongate, then a respected but still somewhat marginalised Scottish company founded in 1973.
His first move in overhauling the company’s image was to establish the ultra hip Payback and Rebel Incorporated imprints, dedicated to championing cult authors.
lieutenant entailed 20,000 "givers" each distributing 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they chose.
Byng is the initiator and Chair of World Book Night, an event in which on 5 March 2011 (following World Book Day on 3 March) one million books — 40,000 copies of each of 25 carefully selected titles — were given away to members of the public in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
