Spanning Whitehall to a sergeants' mess in India, commuter Sevenoaks to Hitler's Berlin, pre-war Paris to working class Bristol, this partial autobiography of C. H. Sisson will surprise enthusiasts of his poetry and essays both by its candour and its reticence. The story profiles Sisson as a student, soldier, civil servant, critic and translator. This work casts new light on the literary history of the 1930s and 1960s, when Sisson was part of the X group.
C. H. SISSON was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature in 1993. Carcanet published his poems, translations and prose writings. Born in Bristol in 1914, C. H. Sisson is one of our finest poets and `one of the great translators of our time' (Times Literary Supplement). He is also a novelist, essayist and polemicist. Carcanet publish his Collected Poems, his novels, essays, and his autobiography On the Lookout, as well as his versions of Dante, Virgil, La Fontaine, Du Bellay, Lucretius and others.