Chris McCully, despite being charming, talented, and a recovering alcoholic, is still Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester University. He currently lives in Amsterdam, and is to re-marry in June 2001. There is no causal relationship between these surprising facts. Now, in his mid-40's, and wearing the same vaguely stained cocktail jacket, he is trying to persuade the world of the value of the quieter virtues (listening, reading, music, gardening, and fly-fishing, though not necessarily in that order). The world, as expected, largely ignores this persuasion. McCully's intellectual interests are beginning to range even more widely, from Old English poetry and prose to the formal rigours of Optimality Theory; from Dante through Erasmus to Heidegger. In short, he is what university appointments committees scorn as 'a generalist'. Nevertheless, his work, both poetry and prose, continues to win awards, and despite his dubious taste in fishing-hats and puns, he shows no signs yet of going away. His works on phonological theory, English stress, Old English, and the history of the English language have been issued by, or are forthcoming from, Cambridge University Press, who also produced his co-edited text English Historical Metrics (1996). In 1993 he won the Caedmon Prize for 'poetry in Old English'. He edited the critical anthology The Poet's Voice and Craft (Carcanet, 1994). His other major interest is represented in Fly-Fishing: a Book of words (Carcanet, 1994).