Born 1934 - went to local grammar school, where somehow learnt no science but did English, German, French, Latin and Greek in the sixth form; - won scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, to read Modern Languages (German and Russian); - 1956 my first visit to Russia with small group of Cambridge students; - 1959 got married and went to Australia where my two children were born and I taught Russian literature at Adelaide and Melbourne universities; - 1964 returned to England, worked for a year in the Foreign Office; - 1966 was appointed lecturer at the just-founded University of Essex in Colchester, where I stayed for thirty-one years as teacher of literature (mainly Russian) and twelve as research professor, am now professor emeritus; - in the 1960s I worked with Donald Davie translating Pasternak, and with Elaine Feinstein translating Tsvetaeva; in more recent years I worked with Robert Chandler translating Platonov; over the years I've published ten books, perhaps most notably Lou Andreas-Salomé (1984), Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (1989), The Marsh of Gold: Pasternak's Writings on Inspiration and Creation (2008) and two books of Tsvetaeva in translation, Art in the Light of Conscience (1992) and The Ratcatcher (1999); - my daughter and son live in London (daughter a professor of social psychology who conducts comparative research on children and new media; son an actor, and [as practitioner] a teacher of drama); - I have four grandchildren; - I still live in Colchester, with my partner, Alan, and large black cat called Dusk.

Angela Livingstone