James Fenton was educated at the Durham Choristers School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford.
16 Facts About James Fenton
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James Fenton expounded on Fenton's modesty, describing him as infinitely more mature than himself and Martin Amis.
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James Fenton read his poem 'For Andrew Wood' at the Vanity Fair Hitchens memorial service.
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James Fenton was political correspondent of the New Statesman, where he worked alongside Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes and Martin Amis.
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James Fenton became the Assistant Literary Editor in 1971, and Editorial Assistant in 1972.
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James Fenton was an occasional war reporter in Vietnam during the late phase of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975.
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In 1983, James Fenton accompanied his friend Redmond O'Hanlon to Borneo.
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James Fenton was appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1994, a post he held till 1999.
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James Fenton was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2007.
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The American composer Charles Wuorinen set several of his poems to music, and James Fenton served as librettist for Wuorinen's opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, based on Salman Rushdie's novel.
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James Fenton has been a frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Independent and The New York Review of Books.
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James Fenton once wrote the head column in the editorials of each Friday's Evening Standard.
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James Fenton's partner is Darryl Pinckney, the prize-winning novelist, playwright and essayist perhaps best known for the novel High Cotton.
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James Fenton has been influenced in his writing by musical theatre, as evidenced in "Here Come the Drum Majorettes" from Out of Danger:.
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James Fenton was the original English librettist for the musical of Les Miserables but Cameron Mackintosh later replaced him with Herbert Kretzmer.
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Kretzmer credited James Fenton with creating the general structure of the adaptation, and James Fenton is credited for additional lyrics, for which he receives royalties, as stipulated in his contract.