Was born in 1945 and grew up in London. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, and since then has spent most of his life living and teaching in Cambridge, apart from two years spent in Italy. A poet first and foremost, he has published two full-length collections of verse, The Dwelling Place (1977) and Devotions (1982), and has translated Forced March — selected poems of Miklos Radnoti — from the Hungarian in collaboration with George Gomori. He has also edited a collection of essays by Thom Gunn, The Occasions of Poetry, and written critical essays, reviews, poems and verse translations from Italian, German, Polish and Hungarian for a wide variety of journals in England and America. His admiration of Ruskin, which he describes as almost a way of life, began when he was an undergraduate and developed during the time he spent in Florence and Venice.