Iain Bamforth was born in 1959 into a Plymouth Brethren family and grew up in Glasgow, where he attended the university. He is a doctor and scientific translator. He now lives and runs his own practice in Strasbourg, and contributes regularly to a number of periodicals including PN Review, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review. Sons and Pioneers received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1992. In addition to his previous books of poetry with Carcanet, Sons and Pioneers and Open Workings, Verso publish his literary history of medicine The Body in the Library, to be joined in 2005 by a book of essays on medicine and modernity.