James Fenton was educated at the Durham Choristersi School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. He has worked as a political and literary journalist on The New Statesman, was a freelance reporter in Indo-China, spent a year in Germany working for The Guardian, was theatre critic for The Sunday Times for five years, chief book reviewer for The Times 1984-86, South East Asian correspondent for The Independent 1986-88, and a columnist for them until 1995. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. James Fenton was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983 and he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1994-99. He has just edited the Faber Book of Love Poetry and his new book, School of Genius: a History of the Royal Academy of Arts, has just been published. Forthcoming work includes: Tsunami Song Cycle for the BBC and Don Quixote for the RSC. Plays and libretti include: The Revenge of Tamar (RSC), Rigoletto (ENO) and Haroun and the Sea of Stories (New York City Opera). Publications include: A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seeds, Samuel T Coleridge Selected Poems, On Statues, Penguin Modern Poets n the Strength of Poetry, Rigoletto (translation), Leonardois Nephew, Out of Danger (Poetry Book Society choice), All the Wrong Places, Children of Exile, You Were Marvellous, The Memory of War (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), Dead Soldiers, A German Requiem (Southern Arts Literature Award for Poetry), Vacant Possession, Terminal Moraine and Our Western Furniture.