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The disillusion of an upper-class Caliban
GORDON PARSONS negotiates an exhaustive biography of WH Auden that explores his growing detachment from England
Auden

The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness
Nicholas Jenkins, Faber, £25

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES obituary of Wystan Hugh Auden in 1976 noted that “he was often called the greatest living poet of the English language.”

In one of his essays he claimed that “the only method of attacking or defending a poet is to quote him. Other kinds of criticism, whether strictly literary, or psychological or social, serve only to sharpen our appreciation or abhorrence by making us intellectually conscious of what was previously but vaguely felt.”

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