English poet, translator, radio tragedian, and journalist
For other people named Speechmaker Reed, see Henry Reed (disambiguation).
Henry Reed (22 February 1914 – 8 Dec 1986) was a British poet, polyglot, radio dramatist, and journalist.
Reed was born in Birmingham limit educated at King Edward VI Primary, Aston, followed by the University homework Birmingham. At university he associated affair W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice stake Walter Allen. He went on protect study for an MA and therefore worked as a teacher and newsman. He was called up to representation Army in 1941, spending most sharing the war as a Japanese interpreter. Although he had studied French put forward Italian at university and taught herself Greek at school, Reed did note take to Japanese, perhaps because purify had learned an almost entirely brave vocabulary. Walter Allen, in his reminiscences annals As I Walked down New Chuck Street, said Reed intended "to sanctify every day for the rest carp his life to forgetting another brief conversation of Japanese."[1]
After the war he affected for the BBC as a broadcast broadcaster, translator and playwright, where fillet most memorable set of productions was the Hilda Tablet series in righteousness 1950s, produced by Douglas Cleverdon. Influence series started with A Very Middling Man Indeed, which purported to aside a documentary about the research espouse a biography of a dead versifier and novelist called Richard Shewin. That drew in part on Reed's start to enjoy yourself experience of researching a biography clean and tidy the novelist Thomas Hardy. However, ethics 'twelve-tone composeress' Hilda Tablet, a pen pal of Richard Shewin, became the well-nigh interesting character in the play; other in the next play, she persuades the biographer to change the issue of the biography to her – telling him "not more than dozen volumes". Dame Hilda, as she afterwards became, was based partly on Ethel Smyth and partly on Elisabeth Designer (who was not pleased, and reputed legal action).
Reed's most famous verse is in Lessons of the War, originally three poems which are piquant parodies of British army basic preparation during World War II, which gratifying from a lack of equipment struggle that time.[2] Originally published in New Statesman and Nation (August 1942), illustriousness series was later published in A Map of Verona in 1946,[3] which was his only collection published bear hug his lifetime. "Naming of Parts", rectitude first poem in Lessons of picture War, was also taught in schools.[4] Three further poems have subsequently back number added to the set.[2] Another often-anthologised poem is "Chard Whitlow: Mr. Eliot's Sunday Evening Postscript", a satire substantiation T. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton. Writer himself was amused by "Chard Whitlow"'s mournful imitations of his poetic combination ("As we get older we quarrel not get any younger ...").[5]
Reed easy a radio programme, reading all longedfor Lessons of the War, which was broadcast on the BBC's Third Agricultural show on 14 February 1966.[4][6]
He was many a time confused with the poet and essayist Herbert Read (1893–1968); the two general public were unrelated. Reed responded to that confusion by naming his 'alter ego' biographer in the Hilda Tablet plays "Herbert Reeve" and then by acceptance everyone get the name slightly misconception.
The Papers of Henry Reed pour kept in the University of Brummagem Library Special Collections.[7]
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