George Szirtes was born in Hungary in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. Having studied Fine Art, he published the first of his so far 15 books of poems, The Slant Door, in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial Prize. He has published many since then, winning the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2004, and was shortlisted for the same prize for his two subsequent books: The Burning of the Books (2009) and Bad Machine (2013). His New and Collected Poems appeared in 2008. His most recent book is Mapping the Delta (2016) which was a PBS Choice. He is also a prize-winning translator of poetry and fiction from Hungarian. His translation of László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango won the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in the US as well as the translator’s prize in the Man Booker International 2015. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1982, he has written books for children and has worked extensively for press and radio. His work has been translated into various languages.