Tom Paulin, critic, playwright, and “School of Ulster” poet was born in England and raised in Belfast in Northern Ireland. Of this experience he has said, “All my imaginative writing, and much of my critical writing, has been affected by the experience of growing up in the North of Ireland.”
Currently a lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford, he is a well-known broadcaster and a regular member of the panel for the BBC Television program Newsnight Review. Much of his early poetry reflects the political situation in Northern Ireland and the sectarian violence the province has witnessed since the late 1960’s.
His most recent book, The Invasion Handbook, is the first installment of an epic poem about World War II. His non-fiction includes Ireland and the English Crisis, and most recently (with Amit Chaudhuri), D. H. Lawrence and “Difference”: The Poetry of the Present.