Born near the River Thames and London, to a mother of distant Norman ancestry and a father who could not be more English. After studying at Cambridge, he became a university professor in England, then the first Briton elected to the Collège de France and the Académie française. Poet in English and French, prose writer, philosopher and, more recently, theologian. Member of the Académie des Jeux floraux, as Master of the Jeux, Honorary Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, Honorary Doctor of Cambridge University. Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, Commandeur des arts et des lettres, Officer in the Order of the British Empire, I was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014.
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