Being Shakespeare

Jonathan Bate studied at Cambridge and Harvard universities. Well known as a biographer, critic, broadcaster and scholar, he is provost of Worcester College and professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has wide-ranging research interests in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, Romanticism, biography and life-writing, eco-criticism, contemporary poetry and theatre history. He is a fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, as well as an honorary fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Before moving to Oxford in 2011, he was a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge; then King Alfred professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool; and then professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. He is on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company; broadcasts regularly for the BBC; writes for The Guardian, The Times, TLS and The Sunday Telegraph; and has held visiting posts at Yale and UCLA. In 2006, he was awarded a CBE in the Queen's 80th birthday honours for his services to higher education. He is currently vice-president (leading the humanities) of the British Academy. He is consultant curator for the British Museum's major Shakespeare exhibition for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Back to Being Shakespeare