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EARLY LIFE He was born to a journalist father (Edward Harold Spender); his mother was Violet Hilda (née Schuster), who was a painter and a poet. Spender went to Gresham's School , Holt, as a child and University College, London and University College , Oxford as a young adult. He was made an honorary fellow of Oxford University in 1973. However, he did not finish his at degree London University and lived for periods of time in Germany. He said at various times throughout his life that he never passed an exam, ever. Perhaps his closest friend and the man who had the biggest influence on him was W.H. Auden . Around this time he was also friends with Christopher Isherwood (who had also lived in Weimar Germany ), and fellow Macspaunday members Louis MacNeice , and C. Day Lewis . He would later come to know W.B. Yeats , Allen Ginsberg , Ted Hughes , Joseph Brodsky , Isaiah Berlin , Mary McCarthy , Roy Campbell , Raymond Chandler , Dylan Thomas , Jean-Paul Sartre and T. S. Eliot , as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group , in particular Virginia Woolf . His early poetry, notably ''Poems'' (1933) was often inspired by social protest. His convictions found further expression in ''Vienna'' (1934], a long poem in praise of the 1934 uprising of drama in verse. His autobiography, '' World Within World '' (1951), is a re-creation of much of the political and social atmosphere of the 1930s. Spender began work on a novel in 1929, which was not published until 1988, under the title ''The Temple''. The novel is about a young man who travels to Germany and finds a culture at once more open than England—particularly about relationships between men — and showing frightening anticipations of Nazism, which are confusingly related to the very openness the main character admires. Spender says in his 1988 introduction: :In the late Twenties young English writers were more concerned with censorship than with politics.... 1929 was the last year of that strange Indian Summer -- the Weimar Republic. For many of my friends and for myself, Germany seemed a paradise where there was no censorship and young Germans enjoyed extraordinary freedom in their lives....Quoted in Richard R. Bozorth, ''"But Who Would Get It?": Auden and the Codes of Poetry and Desire'' (ELH 62.3 {Link without Title} 709-727). THE WAR YEARS When the Spanish Civil War began, he went to Spain with the International Brigade s (who were fighting against Francisco Franco 's Fascist forces) to report and observe for the Communist Party Of Great Britain . Harry Pollitt , head of the CPGB , told Spender "to go and get killed; we need a Byron in the movement." A member of the political left wing during this early period, he was one of those who wrote of their disillusionment with Communism in the essay collection '' The God That Failed '' (1949), along with Arthur Koestler and others. It is thought that one of the big areas of disappointment was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia , which many leftists saw as a betrayal. Like fellow poets W.H. Auden , Christopher Isherwood and several other outspoken opponents of fascism in the 1930s, Spender did not see active military service in World War II . He was initially graded 'C' upon examination due to his earlier Colitis , poor eyesight, Varicose Veins and the long term effects of a Tapeworm in 1934. However, he contrived by pulling strings to be re-examined and was upgraded to 'B' which meant that he could serve in the London Auxiliary Fire Service. He felt close to the Jew ish people; his mother, Violet Hilda Schuster, was half Jewish (her father's family were German Jews who converted to Christianity , while her mother came from an upper-class family of Catholic German , Lutheran Danish and distantly Italian descent). Spender's second wife, Natasha Litvin / Lady Spender , whom he married in 1941, was also part Jewish. With in 1954. In 1961 he became professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College , London. He helped found the magazine ''Index on Censorship'', he was involved in the founding of the Poetry Book Society, and he did work for UNESCO . Warwick McFadyen, review of John Sutherland's biography "Stephen Spender", '' The Age '', Review, p.3 LATE LIFE Spender was Professor of English at University College, London , 1970-77, and then became Professor Emeritus . In 1980, following a lecture in Oneonta, New York , Spender's plane was grounded due to bad weather, so he took a Taxi 287 miles to Manhattan for a date with Jacqueline Onassis . "I simply had to get there," he said. {Link without Title} Spender was made a CBE in 1962 and Knighted in 1983. He married Natasha Litvin, a concert pianist, in 1941. Their daughter Lizzie is married to the Australia n actor/comedian Barry Humphries , and their son Matthew is married to the daughter of the Armenia n artist Arshile Gorky . SEXUALITY Spender's sexuality has been the subject of debate. Spender's seemingly changing attitudes towards 2006 though his relationship with Hyndman complicated both this relationship and his short-lived marriage to Inez Maria Pearn (1936-39). His marriage to Natasha Litvin in 1941 seems to have marked the end of his romantic relationships with men. Subsequently, he toned down homosexual allusions in later editions of his poetry. The following line was revised in a republished edition: Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution. It was later revised to read: Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution. Spender sued author David Leavitt for allegedly using his relationship with "Jimmy Younger" in Leavitt's '' While England Sleeps '' in 1994. The case was settled out of court with Leavitt removing certain portions from his text. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Poetry
Letters and journals
Criticism, travel books, and essays
Drama
Memoir
Fiction
NOTES FURTHER READING
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