Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is a poet whose very name conjures up a specific persona: the gloomy, death-obsessed and darkly humorous observer of human foibles and failings. The truth, both about the man and his work, is more complex, but the…

Jackie Kay (b. 1961) is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays, whose subtle investigation into the complexities of identity have been informed by her own life. Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, she was…

Owen Sheers (b. 1974, Fiji) was chosen as one of the Next Generation Poets and as one of the Independent’s top 30 young British writers on the strength of his first book of poetry, The Blue Book. His second, Skirrid…

Roger McGough (b. 1937) is one of Britain’s best-loved poets. Top-selling The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10 with Liverpool poets Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, hits with Mike McCartney and John Gorman in The Scaffold and college touring with…

Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010) was born and educated in Glasgow, where he returned to lecture in English Literature at Glasgow University after a period in the army. He was the author of many books, including poetry, criticism, essays, translations,…

Sebastian Barker (1945–2014) was the author of many books of poetry and editor of The London Magazine. An ex-chairman of the Poetry Society, he was a director of several literary festivals, including the Royal Berkshire Poetry Festival, and held various…

James Fenton (b. 1949) grew up in Lincolnshire and Staffordshire and was educated at Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for his sonnet sequence ‘Our Western Furniture’. This early poem about the cultural collision…

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the third surviving son of a rector whose violent alcoholism blighted the family home. Tennyson went to Cambridge where he met Arthur Henry Hallam whose early death was to prompt Tennyson to…

Kit Wright (b. 1944) is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children, and the winner of awards including an Arts Council Writers’ Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett…

Jack Mapanje (b. 1944, Malawi), currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, is the author of 4 collections of poetry, the editor of several more, and the recipient of awards including the Rotterdam Poetry…

Mimi Khalvati (b. 1944, Tehran) spent much of her childhood at boarding school on the Isle of Wight, only returning to Iran at seventeen. She has been resident in the UK since the age of twenty-five, where she has published…

Felix Dennis (1947 – 2014) was the colourful publishing entrepreneur whose company, Dennis Publishing, owns many successful titles including flagship publication The Week. A regular fixture in the Sunday Times rich list Dennis travelled a long way since the poverty…

Penelope Shuttle (b. 1947) has made her home in Cornwall since 1970 and the county’s mercurial weather and rich history are continuing sources of inspiration. So too is the personal and artistic union Shuttle shared with her husband, the poet…

Patricia Beer (1924-1999) was born in Exmouth, Devon, into a Plymouth Brethren family, a childhood she recalls vividly in her autobiography Mrs Beer’s House. Educated at Exmouth Grammar School, Exeter University and Oxford, she lived in Italy lecturing in English…

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was the first black writer in America to earn his living from writing. Born in Joplin, Missouri, he had a migratory childhood following his parents’ separation, spending time in the American Mid-West and Mexico. He attended Columbia…

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) was a friend and contemporary of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender at Oxford and his poetry has often been linked to their own. Whilst sharing certain characteristics with them, including a sharp political awareness, in recent…

Michael Rosen (b. 1946) says he became a children’s poet by accident – “I thought I was being an ironic adult poet but children’s literature ‘claimed’ me”. He has since become a very well-known poet, for adults as well as…

Christopher Middleton (1926 – 2015) is best known for his poems, short prose, essays, and translations. He served in the RAF from 1944 to 1948, then attended Merton College, Oxford. After a spell of teaching English at the University of…