Jonathan Bate is well known as a critic, broadcaster, biographer and Shakespeare scholar. Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, he is chief editor of *The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works* and the author of many books, including *Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare* and *John Clare: A Biography*, which won Britain's two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was made CBE in the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours List.He is currently writing the life of Ted Hughes.