(born 21 September 1940) was, until September 2011, a distinguished research professor at Cardiff University in the School of English, Communications and Philosophy; and is currently honorary research professor of English Literature at the University of Melbourne in the School of Culture and Communication.
His areas of expertise include English literature, medieval literature, cultural studies, crime fiction, Robin Hood and Australian matters.
He has published a large number of books, and is well known in the public sphere for his contribution to these and other fields.
His most recent books have been The Mysteries of the Cities (2012), Secrets of Crime Fiction Classics (2014) and Reading Robin Hood (2015).
New themes are raised in his book The Politics of Myth (2015), and he is now working on the many novels of G.
W.
M.
Reynolds, who wrote and sold more books than Dickens, but has been silenced by conventional literary criticism.