Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet, critic, non-fiction author and novelist. She has published eight poetry collections, most recently The Mara Crossing, a book of prose and prose on intrigingly different aspects of migration, animal and human - and popular books on reading poetry. In Britain she presents Radio 4's "Poetry Workshop", in which she visits poetry groups across the country to discuss their poems. Her book on tiger conservation, Tigers in Red Weather, describes journeys through the remaining tiger forests of Asia and the scientists who study and protect wild tigers. She drew on this research also for her novel, Where the Serpent Lives, which features wildlife crime.
Her book of poems Darwin - A Life in Poems is a verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. Ruth broadcasts on music, wildlife, poetry, and the lives of thinkers and artists such as Elgar, Tennyson, Darwin and W S Gilbert - on BBC Radio 3 and 4.

Ruth is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London but started out as a Greek scholar. Her passions are music, especially singing, wildlife and conservation, Greece; India, history and science. See www.ruthpadel.com.