Worcester College elects new Provost

Professor Jonathan Bate has been elected as the next Provost of Worcester College. Professor Bate will take up office in the summer of 2011 on the retirement of Mr Richard Smethurst, who has been Provost since 1991. Jonathan Bate, born in 1958, was educated at Sevenoaks School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature. After completing his doctorate, he was a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was appointed King Alfred Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool in 1990. Since 2003, he has been Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. Well known as a critic, biographer and broadcaster, Jonathan Bate has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA.