Roberts, Michael (William Edward)

(1902-1948)

   Born in Bournemouth, Dorset, he lived on a farm in the New Forest, read chemistry at King's College, London, then mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he adopted the forename Michael. He graduated in 1925 and spent most of his working life teaching mathematics, physics and English literature at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastleupon-Tyne. During World War II he worked for the BBC's European Service, organizing broadcasts to occupied countries. He returned to education in 1945 as principal of the College of St. Mark and St. John, an Anglican teacher-training college then based in London. In August of 1948 he was diagnosed with the leukemia that led to his death in December of that year. His poetry publications: These Our Matins, 1930. Poems, 1936. Orion Marches, 1939. The anthologies he edited: New Signatures, 1932. New Countries, 1933. The Faber Book of Modern Verse, 1936. The Faber Book of Comic Verse, 1942. Some of his poems: "H.M.S. Hero," "Hymn to the Sun," "In Our Time," "Midnight," "St. Gervais," "St. Ursanne," "The Caves," "The Green Lake."

   Sources: Collected Poems of Michael Roberts. Faber and Faber, 1958. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-1955. Cecil Day Lewis and John Lehmann, eds. Chatto and Windus, 1966. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Children's Verse. Janet Adam Smith, ed. Faber and Faber, 1953. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.