Table of Contents

1: The BBC War
2: The War within the BBC
3: Chinabound
4: Sounding the South: Kenyon College, Summer 1948
5: Siege and Liberation
6: The New China
7: Changes in China; and Kenyon Again
8: Quitting Communist china
9: Final Reckoning: The Affair of Fei Hsiao-t'ung
10: 'A Mighty Raspberry': iThe Structure of Complex Words/i
11: Homing to Yorkshire
12: From Poetry to the Queen
13: Ménage a Trois
14: The Anti-Christian: iMilton's God/i
15: 'They think good literature is a tremendous scolding': From Sheffield to Legon
16: The Road to Retirement
17: Rescuing Donne and Coleridge
18: Roamings in Retirement
19: iFaustus/i: Finale

Reviews

John Haffenden's monumental two-volume biography leaves us in no doubt of the importance of Empson's upbringing as a scion of Yorkshire gentry...One of the big achievements of Haffenden's narrative is the painstaking account of Empson's gradual maturation as a critic. Jason Harding, Essays in Criticism Haffenden's narrative is driven along with such gusto, such alert intelligence, such obvious pleasure in the task, that no one could reasonably grumble at the story's inordinate length. It is a virtuoso feat of scholarship: a telling demonstration of what biography, as it finest, can actually achieve. Ian Donaldson Australian Book Review This is scholarship in the grand style Contemporary Poetry Review