Tom Paulin was born in Leeds in 1949 but grew up in Belfast. He is currently the GM Young Lecturer in English Lit at Hertford College, Oxford.

He won the Somerset Maugham prize in 1977 for his first collection of poetry, A State of Justice, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1982 for his second collection.

His latest collection, The Invasion Handbook, is published by Faber in Autumn 2001. He has edited two collections for Faber and Faber - The Faber Book of Political Verse (1986) and The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse (1990).