W. Glyn Jones read Modern Languages at Pembroke College Cambridge, with Danish as his principal language, before doing his doctoral thesis at Cambridge. He taught at various universities in England and Scandinavia before becoming Professor of Scandinavian Studies at Newcastle and then at the University of East Anglia. He also spent two years as Professor of Scandinavian Literature in the Faeroese Academy. On his retirement from teaching he was created a Knight of the Royal Danish Order of the Dannebrog.
He has written widely on Danish, Faeroese and Finland-Swedish literature including studies of Johannes Jorgensen, Tove Jansson and William Heinesen.
He is the author of Denmark: A Modern History and co-author with his wife, Kirsten Gade, of Colloquial Danish and the Blue Guide to Denmark.
His translations from Danish include Seneca by Villy Sorensen and for Dedalus The Black Cauldron, The Lost Musicians, Windswept Dawn, The Good Hope and Mother Pleiades by William Heinesen and My Fairy-Tale Life by Hans Christian Andersen.
He is currently translating The Tower at the Edge of the World by William Heinesen.