Alan Sinfield (17 December 1941 – 2 December 2017) was an English theorist in the fields of Shakespeare and sexuality, modern theatre, gender studies, queer theory, queer studies, post-1945 politics and cultural theory.
Ernest Sinfield died serving in the Royal Air Force in 1944, and Lucy began experiencing Parkinson's disease soon after, though she continued working, washing dishes in a cafe in difficult conditions.
[1] Growing up in a poor household "made Alan acutely aware of the limitations of the postwar promise to provide equal access to the nation’s resources",[2] and he credited his mother's experience with shaping his political commitment to, in his own words, "disadvantaged people—those who are elderly, infirm, unemployed, black, queer, lone parents, and so on".
[1] Sinfield attended the Royal Wolverhampton School on a scholarship for children who had lost parents in the War.
[1] This was followed by University College London, from which he took a first-class BA in 1964, an MA in 1967 (which was the basis for his 1971 The Language of Tennyson's In Memoriam), and a DLitt in 1987.