Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. His new book Laurels and Donkeys (November 2010) is a sequence of war poems referring to 20th- and 21st-century conflicts that have involved British forces. He has been Chairman of the Arts Council of England's Literature Panel since 1996. He was knighted in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours list.