Anthony Cronin was born in Enniscorthy Co Wexford. He has lived much abroad but has been settled in Dublin for some time and is married to the writer Anne Haverty.

He is the author of twelve books of poetry, which include the well-known longer poems RMS Titanic and The End Of The Modern World. His most recent collection, published this year, is The Fall.

He has also written a number of admired prose-works, among them No Laughing Matter, a biography of Flann O'Brien, and The Last Modernist, a life of Samuel Beckett. Dead As Doornails, a memoir of some of his friends of earlier decades in Dublin and London, has been re-printed and re-issued many times since its publication in the 1970's. The first of his two novels, The Life Of Riley, will be re-issued later this year. He has published several collections of essays, many concerned with the subject of art and society. He wrote a weekly column in The Irish Times for some years and now contributes regularly to The Sunday Independent.

He was Cultural and Artistic Adviser to Charles Haughey, being instrumental in the creation of Aosdána and the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well as other projects.