Jonathan Bate

Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL (born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of Creativity at Warwick Business School.

Early life

He was educated at Sevenoaks School, the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, where he held a Harkness Fellowship.

Academic career

He was a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and then King Alfred Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University before becoming Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at University of Warwick. In 2011, he succeeded Richard Smethurst as Provost of Worcester College, Oxford.

He is a Governor and for 9 years was a Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. From 2007 to 2011 sat on the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In 2010 he was commissioned by Faber and Faber to write a literary life of Ted Hughes. This was cancelled when the Estate of Ted Hughes withdrew co-operation. The book was subsequently recommissioned by HarperCollins as an "unauthorised" biography.