Anna Beer is a writer, lecturer and researcher who specialises in the literature and culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She was Lecturer in Literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 at the Department for Continuing Education

Oxford University Department for Continuing Education

Oxford University Department for Continuing Education is a department within the University of Oxford that caters mainly for part-time and mature students. It is located at Rewley House, Wellington Square, Oxford, England....

 at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 between 2003 and 2010, and remains a Fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Kellogg College

Kellogg College, Oxford

Kellogg College is one of the largest and most international graduate constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Kellogg College is a graduate college and admissions are not open to undergraduates. The college focuses on the concept of higher, postgraduate and lifelong learning...

. She has published two literary biographies

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

: Bess: The Life of Lady Raleigh

Elizabeth Raleigh

Elizabeth, Lady Raleigh , née Throckmorton, was Sir Walter Raleigh's wife, and a Lady of the Privy Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I of England. Their secret marriage precipitated a long period of royal disfavour for Raleigh....

, Wife to Sir Walter

Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....

and, in celebration of the subject's quatercentenary, Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

: Poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, Pamphleteer

Pamphleteer

A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets. Pamphlets were used to broadcast the writer's opinions on an issue, for example, in order to get people to vote for their favorite politician or to articulate a particular political ideology.A famous pamphleteer...

 and Patriot

Patriotism

Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

. Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...

 describes the latter as, among other things, "a persuasive reading of the power and complexity of Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

," while former Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...

 esteems it "a reliable guide to nonspecialists" and "the anniversary present he [Milton] deserves." Philip Pullman called it 'a beautifully clear account of a richly complex life...Fascinatingly vivid...It's the best narrative I've read of the life of our greatest public poet'. The first biography of Bess Ralegh was also received well: 'Anna Beer tells a fascinating story wonderfully well...A brilliant blend of biography, political narrative and social history'.

Beer's peculiar interest as a biographer is "the relationship between literature, politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 and history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

," which informs especially her life of Milton. Her Milton podcast (for Oxford University) can be found on http://media.conted.ox.ac.uk/video/johnmilton.mp4?CAMEFROM=podcastsGET.