William Radice is Senior Lecturer in Bengali at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has pursued a double career as a poet and as a scholar and translator of Bengali, and has written or edited more than twenty-five books. He has given numerous lectures and poetry readings in Britain and overseas, and has been awarded literary prizes in India and Bangladesh. For the last three years he has written a fortnightly column for the Statesman newspaper in India, and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2's early morning 'Pause for Thought'.