Michael Kennedy was born in Manchester in 1926. Apart from three wartime years in the Royal Navy, he has worked for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph since 1941. He was Northern Editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1960 to 1986 but had begun writing music criticism for it in 1948. In 1986 he became its joint chief music critic and from 1989 to 2005 was music critic of the Sunday Telegraph concentrating (but not exclusively) on opera. He has written several books including The Hallé Tradition (1960), The Hallé 1858-1983 (1982), Portrait of Manchester (1971), History of the Royal Manchester College of Music (1970), and Barbirolli: Conductor Laureate (1971), and Music Enriches All (1994), a history of the first 21 years of the Royal Northern College of Music.

Among his other books are studies of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Walton and Mahler, the Oxford Dictionary of Music and Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (with his wife Joyce as co-author). He has written two books on Strauss, a large-scale biography and the Master Musicians volume, and a BBC Music Guide on the tone-poems. He was made a Companion of the RNCM in 1999, and was on its Board of Governors for over 40 years until his retirement in 2006. For his services to music he was appointed OBE in 1981 and CBE in 1997. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Manchester University in 2003 and in 2005 was made an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society.