Angus C. Graham was born in 1919, in Penarth, Wales, and was educated in Penarth and Shropshire before attending Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he attained a BA in Theology in 1940. He served in the Royal Air Force during WWII, taking a Services Japanese course at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1944-45 which led to him acting as a Japanese interpreter in Malaya and Thailand from 1945-46. Graham attained a BA Hons Chinese from SOAS in 1949 and became a Chinese translator attached to the Malayan police in Penang from 1949-1950.
Graham took up his first academic post in 1950 as a Lecturer in Classical Chinese at SOAS completing his PhD thesis in 1953. He became a Reader in 1966, Professor of Classical Chinese in 1971 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1981. During this period he also was a Visiting Fellow of Hong Kong University (1954-55), Consulting editor of "Foundations of Language" (commencing 1964), a Visiting Professor at University of Michigan (1970) and a Fellow of the Society of Humanities, Cornell University (1972-73).
Graham's research focused mainly around Chinese and western philosophy. He was concerned with the relations between philosophical concepts and the structure of the Chinese language. He published many books and articles connected to his research. He was also interested in poetry and short story writing and translation of early Chinese poetry.
Graham was appointed Emeritus Professor of Classical Chinese at SOAS in 1984. Post-retirement from SOAS he held a number of visiting appointments including at the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, Singapore, Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, Brown University, Rhode Island, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Graham died on 26 March 1991.