Jonathan Keates is a distinguished and prize-winning biographer, novelist and travel writer, and author of the biographies
Handel and
Purcell. He is chairman of the Venice in Peril fund and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for his collection of short stories,
Allegro Postillions (1983). Jonathan Keates is a regular contributor to the
Observer (UK) and the
Times Literary Supplement (UK) among a number of other publications.