Roy Foster was born in Waterford, Ireland, in 1949, and educated in both Ireland and the United States. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a foundation scholar in history, he subsequently became Professor of Modern British History at Birkbeck College, University of London, as well as holding visiting fellowships at St Anthony's College, Oxfrd, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Princeton University. In 1991 he became the first Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and was elected a Fellow of Hertford College. His books include Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family (1976) which is also available through Faber Finds, Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (1981), Modern Ireland 1600 - 1972 (1988), The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland (1989) and a two-part biography of W.B. Yeats which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
