Jonathan Davidson was born in 1964 in Didcot, South Oxfordshire, and now lives in Coventry. He won an Eric Gregory award in 1990, and is the author of various pamphlets and collections of poetry, including Moving the Stereo (Jackson’s Arm, 1993), The Living Room (Arc, 1994), A Horse Called House (Smith|Doorstop, 1997) and Early Train (Smith|Doorstop, 2011). He has had seven radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, along with radio adaptations of Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns and W.S. Graham’s The Nightfishing.

In April 2015, Valley Press published Humfrey Coningsby, a collection of ‘poems, complaints, explanations and demands for satisfaction’ by Jonathan, loosely based on the travels of a lord of the manor from Shropshire, in the late 16th century. Humfrey Coningsby’s story was also the subject of a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Drama by Jonathan, broadcast in June 2015.