Fred Reid was born in Glasgow in 1935. He went blind at the age of 14 and continued his schooling at the Edinburgh School of the Blind. In 1958 he went on to study law and history at Edinburgh University. Discovering that he loved history more than the law, he went to Oxford Queen’s college to obtain a doctorate in history 1967. He joined the History Department at the Warwick University in 1967, two years after it was founded in 1965, and retired in 1997. Since his youth, Fred has also been a fearless spokesmen and activist for the concerns of the blind community in Britain. He served as the President of the National Federation of the Blind & and Partially Sighted (1972-1975). As a trustee, he was heavily involved in the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) from 1974-1987; 1999-2006). He was involved in the formation of the Association of Blind and Partially Sighted Teachers and Students.

Selected works:

- Keir Hardy: The making of a socialist (Crome Helm, 1978)

- Thomas Hardy and History (Basingstoke, 2017)

- Panopticum: A Novel (unpublished 2006, available @ https://www.fredreid.co.uk/toc.html)