Fraser, George Sutherland

(1915-1980)

   He was born in Glasgow but moved to Aberdeen when his father became town clerk. He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school and graduated in English and history from St. Andrews University in 1937. During the war he worked as a journalist at the public relations directorate in Cairo, then as editor in charge of the Eritrean Daily News. After the war he worked in London, scraping a living from articles in the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman and broadcasts on poetry for the BBC Third Program. In 1950 he became cultural adviser to the British Embassy in Japan and went there with his wife and daughter, a son being born not long after their arrival. He suffered a breakdown in health and the family returned to England. He was appointed in 1958 as a lecturer in English literature at Leicester University. He wrote several wellreceived books of literary criticism. Some of his poems: "A Bought Embrace," "Ballata II: Last Song: from Exile," "Christmas Letter Home," "Crises," "Home Town Elegy," "Lament," "Lean Street," "The Song of the Dogs," "The Traveller Has Regrets," "To a Scottish Poet."

   Sources: List of Reading University Library Special Collections (http://www.library.rdg.ac.uk/colls/special/collsindex.html\#f ). Poems from Italy. William Jay Smith and Dana Gioia, eds. New Rivers, 1985. 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 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. The War Poets: An Antholog y of the War Poetry of the 20th Century. Oscar Williams, ed. John Day, 1945.