Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff in 1923. While still a student his first book of poems was published and his first play performed. Further poetry volumes followed over the decades, culminating in his New & Collected Poems(2003) and Running Late(2006). His first novel, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeveappeared in 1954 and his most recent, the Booker long-listed The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glasin 2002. His three prize-winning plays were collected in The View from Row G (1990) and his autobiography, Goodbye, Twentieth Century, was published in 2001. He is president of the Welsh Academi and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.