Professor Michael Alexander is Honorary Professor of English Literature at the University of St. Andrews. He was educated at the universities of Oxford, Perugia and Princeton, and his academic interests focus on medieval and modern English poetry, literary and cultural history, and translation.

His verse translations of Old English have been included in anthologies edited by W. H. Auden, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon, and his Penguin translation of Beowulf is a classic. He has also written The Medieval Revival in England, the first scholarly account of the Medieval Revival, a movement which transformed English social thinking, religion, art and architecture, and English literature.