Paul Farley was born in Liverpool, England and studied at the Chelsea School of Art. His collections of poetry include The Boy from the Chemist Is Here to See You (1998), which won both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Forward Prize; The Ice Age (2002), winner of a Whitbread Poetry Prize; Tramp in Flames (2006), shortlisted for both an International Griffin Poetry Prize and a TS Eliot Prize; and The Dark Film (2012), which was also shortlisted for a TS Eliot Prize. Farley's other works include his collected poems for radio, Field Recordings: BBC Poems 1998-2008 (2009). He currently teaches at Lancaster University. In 2012 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Andrew McRae is Professor of Renaissance Studies in the Department of English and Dean of Postgraduate Research and the Exeter Doctoral College. His publications include God Speed the Plough (1996); Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (2004); and Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England (2009).