John Butt was born in South-West London, UK, in 1943. After eight years secondary education in a rural boarding school, where he developed a lifelong love of the countryside and a deep dislike of all forms of sport, he went on to study Modern Languages at Trinity College Cambridge. In 1965 he became a lecturer in Spanish at King's College, University of London, where, in 1969, he completed a Ph.D. thesis on the political thought of the young Miguel de Unamuno. He spent all his working life in the Spanish Department of King's College, where he eventually became Professor of Modern Hispanic Studies. He retired in 2002, and now lives in Marylebone, London. His interests are linguistics, computers, literature, politics, history, and his hobbies are walking and reading.