Bruce Grant was educated at Perth Modern School and, after Naval service during WW2, at the University of Melbourne (Arts and Journalism). He was a foreign correspondent for the Melbourne Age in Asia, Europe and the USA (1954-1965), High Commissioner in India and Ambassador to Nepal (1973-1976) and government advisor. Grant was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1959-1960 and a Scott Fellow at Ormond College in 1976-1977.

In the 1980s he returned to Australia to take up a Writer in Residency at Monash University, a Visiting Fellowship at ANU and then to be appointed a Professor at Monash Graduate School of Government in Melbourne. Grant has written ten works of non-fiction on Asia and on Australian politics, particularly foreign affairs, such as Australia's Foreign Relations (1991), co-authored by Gareth Evans. Grant also edited Arthur and Eric: An Anglo-Australian Story from the Journal of Arthur Hickman (1977).

Grant is the father-in-law of Hannie Rayson (q.v.). He lives in Melbourne.