Keith Woodhouse wrote his first poem when he was sixteen. Then ensued two A-grade A levels, a year at London University and a year at Falmouth Art School. His father was the painter, Roger Hilton, and his uncle, Michael, wrote for The Telegraph for twenty years. Following a major psychotic breakdown in Brighton in 1988, he has been detained in various hospitals and now lives in a residential care home in Totnes, Devon, where he is steeped in the local café life and consorting with other intellectuals. He is currently fifty-four years of age.