Rüdiger Görner was professor of German with comparative literature at Queen Mary University of London. The founder of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature and the founding director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, his books include biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Oskar Kokoschka. In 2025, he was awarded the Gundolf Prize for the promotion of German culture abroad