John Edwards read Modern History at The Queen's College, Oxford, where he was also Laming Junior Fellow. His doctoral thesis (1976) was on Cordoba and Jerez de la Frontera in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. He taught, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader, in the School of History at the University of Birmingham, and is now Research Fellow in Spanish in the University of Oxford. He has published extensively on the political, economic, social and religious history of Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.