RICHARD BRADFORD has published twenty-five books on various aspects of literature and culture. His work on poetry and poetics has been praised as offering new, groundbreaking perspectives on the nature of verse. More recently, he has specialised in literary biographies of writers such as John Milton, Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Alan Sillitoe and Martin Amis. Bradford has also published an assessment of the current state of the British novel. He has held academic posts at Oxford, the University of Wales and Trinity College, Dublin, and is currently Research Professor of English at the University of Ulster and Visiting Professor at the University of Avignon.