Micheal Gardiner is one of the younger generation of post-Tom-Nairn Scottish intellectuals in Scotland, as much influenced by dance culture and radical French theory as by historical or literary studies of post-Union Scotland. Micheal's reach is unusual: able to write lucid accounts of intellectual history (see From Trocchi to Trainspotting: Scottish Theory since the Sixties), as well as beautiful collections of fiction (see Escalator, based on his experiences in Japan while working as an academic), recently moving into historical biography with his account of Thomas Blake Glover, an influential Scot in Japanese 20th century history. Micheal is currently lecturing in English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University.