MacNeice, Frederick Louis

(1907-1963)

   He was born in Belfast, the son of the rector of Holy Trinity, later bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore. Educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Marlborough College, Wiltshire, he graduated literae humaniores from Merton College, Oxford, in 1930. In 1936 he was appointed lecturer in Greek at Bedford College, London, and also lectured at Cornel University, New York. Rejected for active service in World War II because of bad eyesight, he joined the BBC features department in May 1941 as writerproducer. In 1946 he produced The Dark Tower, a radio dramatic fantasy with music by Benjamin Britten. Queen's University, Belfast, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1957, and in 1958 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. He died of viral pneumonia in London. His autobiography, The Strings Are False, was published posthumously in 1965. Some of his publications: Agamemnon, 1936 (translation from Aeschylus). Poems, 1925-1940, 1940. Springboard, 1945. Holes in the Sky, 1948. Ten Burnt Offerings, 1952. Solstices, 1961. Some of his poems: "Bagpipe Music," "Cock o' the North," "Didymus," "Donegal Triptych," "Suite for Recorders," "The Stygian Banks."

   Sources: Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America. 5th edition. Gerald DeWitt Sanders and John Herbert Nelson, eds., Macmillan, 1970. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Seven Centuries of Poetry: Chaucer to Dylan Thomas. A.N. Jeffares, ed. Longmans, Green, 1955. The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice. E.R. Dodds, ed. Faber and Faber, 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 Oxford Anthology of English Poetry. Vol. II: Blake to Heaney. John Wain, ed. Oxford University Press, 1990. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.