James Fenton

is a trustee of the National Gallery. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He has worked as a political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry for the period 1994-99. In 2007 he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.