Michael J. Alexander

Alexander was educated at Downside School, read English at Oxford University, then spent a year in France and in Italy, attending the University of Perugia. He then spent some years working in the publishing industry in London, interrupted by attending Princeton University. Before taking up his post at St. Andrews he was a lecturer at the University of Stirling.

For many years he was a member of the Scottish team in Radio 4's Round Britain quiz show.

Alexander died on 5 November 2023, at the age of 82.

Beowulf translation

Alexander stated that his verse translation of Beowulf imitated the form of the original, "stimulated by the example of Ezra Pound's version of [the Old English poem] 'The Seafarer'". The scholar Hugh Magennis calls Alexander's translation "accessible but not reductive", notes that it sold "hundreds of thousands" of copies and that it was liked by both students and teachers, and devotes a whole chapter of his book on translating Beowulf to it.