Neil Powell was born in London in 1948 and educated at Sevenoaks School and the University of Warwick. He has taught English, owned a bookshop and, since 1990, been a full-time author and editor. His books include seven collections of poetry – At the Edge (1977), A Season of Calm Weather (1982), True Colours (1990), The Stones on Thorpeness Beach (1994), Selected Poems (1998), A Halfway House (2004) and Proof of Identity (2012) – as well as Carpenters of Light (1979), Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995), The Language of Jazz (1997), all published by Carcanet Press, and George Crabbe: An English Life (Pimlico, 2004) and Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations (Macmillan, 2008). His centenary life of Benjamin Britten will be published by Hutchinson in 2013. He lives in Orford, Suffolk.

Author photo by Nick Ash.