Literature

Wystan Hugh Auden, known more commonly as W. H. Auden, was born on the 21st February 1907, in York. Auden was the third of three children, all sons.

Auden's first school was St. Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey, where he met Christopher Isherwood. At 13 he went to Gresham's School in Norfolk. Until 1922 Auden expected to pursue a career as a mining engineer, and the abandoned lead mines of northern England were a "sacred landscape" for him. Then a school friend Robert Medley who was two years ahead of him, first suggested that he might write poetry.

Archibald Joseph Cronin was born on the 19th July 1896 in Cardross and raised in Yorkhill, Glasgow, Cronin was the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Montgomerie Cronin, and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin, and would later write of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds.

Cronin was a precocious student at both Dumbarton Academy and St. Aloysius' College, winning many writing competitions. Due to his exceptional abilities, he was awarded a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow.

Tom Gallacher was born in Alexandria on February 16 1934. He was the third son and one of five children of Edward and Rose Gallacher, who moved from the Vale of Leven to Garelochhead when he was one.

Day Lewis was born on April 27, 1904, in Ballin Ireland, the only child of the Rev. F. C. Day Lewis.

When Cecil was 4, his mother died and the family moved to England. He was educated at Sherborne School on a scholarship and was an exhibitioner at Wadham College, Oxford.

Robin was born in London on the 5th October 1934, and spent six years of his early childhood in pre-independence India as a ‘child of the British Raj’, whilst his father served as an Indian Army officer. In 1946 Robin returned to the UK and completed his education at Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon and Cambridge University, where he obtained a MA degree in Social Anthropology.