Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, he has published eleven collections of poetry, including Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014. He also writes extensively for television and radio and is the author of two novels and the non-fiction bestsellers All Points North (1998), Walking Home (2012), and Walking Away (2015). His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare's Globe in 2014. In 2010 he received the CBE for services to poetry and in 2015 was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.