Simon Gaunt FBA (1959-2021) was a professor of French literature at King's College London, where he was Head of the French Department and Head of the School of Humanities. He was past president of the Society for French Studies (2006-8), a Fellow of King's College, London from 2015 and an Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge from 2016. Gaunt did his graduate studies at the University of Warwick and then taught at the University of Cambridge before moving to King's College to take up an established chair in 1998.