A poet, novelist and playwright, Glyn Maxwell was born in Welwyn Garden City in 1962. He read English at Oxford and then studied poetry and playwriting under Derek Walcott in Boston. His debut poetry collection Tale of the Mayor's Son (1990) was widely praised - Joseph Brodky hailed Maxwell as 'a poet of immense promise and unforgettable delivery.' Maxwell won a Somerset Maugham Award for his next collection Out of the Rain (1992) and Rest for the Wicked (1995) was shortlisted for both the Whitbread Poetry Award and the T S Eliot Prize, while The Breakage (1998) was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot and the Forward Poetry Prizes. His verse-novel Time's Fool (2001) was hailed by The Scotsman as a 'classic' and his most recent collection, The Nerve (2002) won many plaudits. The Guardian found an 'ever more assured technical grasp and a deepening thematic sense' and believed that his dramatic sense was 'sharper than ever, and the strength of his line undiminished.'