[4][5] Ward was educated at Manchester Grammar School, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature and graduated with a first-class degree in 1975.
[8] His first book Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets (1993: new edition, 2001) was followed by other books and articles, including The Writing of America: Literature and Cultural Identity from the Puritans to the Present (Polity, 2002), which he researched during a year spent in the USA as a Fellow of the Leverhulme Foundation.
He left four years later to serve as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and then Vice Principal at Royal Holloway, University of London.
In addition to his scholarly work, Ward has written and presented occasional broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, including on David Foster Wallace.
[8] A Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he has also been elected to an Honorary Fellowship at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.