He was born in Bournemouth, and educated at Bournemouth School and King's College London. In 1922 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge to read mathematics; during this period (to 1924) of his life he acquired the name Michael (after Mikhail Lomonosov).In the late 1920s he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain but was expelled within a year.

He then taught at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle until 1941, apart from an interval in London from 1931-34. Having published a first poetry collection in 1930, he started to edit anthologies, of which New Country (1933) became celebrated for the group of poets, including W. H. Auden, it featured. In 1934 he took part in a high-profile series of radio broadcasts, Whither Britain?, together with major figures such as Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin. In 1935 he married Janet Adam Smith, critic and anthologist, and fellow mountaineer; they lived in Fern Avenue, Jesmond Newcastle upon Tyne where they were visited by W. H. Auden in September 1937. In 1941 they went to the Lake District when the school was evacuated. There they shared a house with the poet Kathleen Raine.

He was father of Adam Roberts, Professor of International Relations at Balliol College, Oxford.

The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936), which he edited, is the single piece of work for which Roberts is now best remembered. He followed it with poetry and prose writing, and a study of T. E. Hulme. He became a BBC broadcaster during World War II. From 1945 to 1948 he was Principal of the College of St Mark and St John in Chelsea, London, where he worked with the biologist Cyril Bibby. He died of leukaemia in 1948.

W. H. Auden, Julian Bell, C. Day Lewis, Richard Eberhart, William Empson, John Lehmann, William Plomer, Stephen Spender, A. S. J. Tessimond

W. H. Auden, Richard Goodman, C. Day Lewis, John Lehmann, Charles Madge, Michael Roberts, Stephen Spender, A. S. J. Tessimond, Rex Warner