Timothy Mathews is Emeritus Professor of French and Comparative Criticism, University College London. He was co-editor with Michael Worton of the Bloodaxe Contemporary French Poets series, contributing an introduction to Yves Bonnefoy's On the Motion and Immobility of Douve (1992). He later took over the work of translating Gérard Macé's Wood Asleep (2003) following the death of David Kelley who had started translating the book. Whether in writing criticism, translations, or other creative pieces, he is driven by what relating to art can tell us about relating to people, as in Chronicles of Art and Hope: on Demagoguery and Beyond, published by Ma Bibliothèque in 2025. His other recent work of creative nonfiction is There and Not Here: Chronicles of Art and Loss (Ma Bibliothèque, 2022). His most recent work with translation is Guillaume Apollinaire, Seated Woman (Shearsman Books, 2023), and Roland Barthes’ Fragments of a Lover's Discourse: Translating Again, Writing Again, co-edited with Patrick ffrench (CounterText, 2023). With Sarah Kay, his most recent co-edited book is The Modernist Bestiary (UCL Press, 2020). His most recent book of art writing is Alberto Giacometti: the Art of Relation (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). He a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Member of the Academy of Europe, and Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
