Context

• Published when lots of new houses were being built, entrapped??
• solitary, depressed, miserable writer
• shadow of WW2 and austerity that followed
• conservative in viewpoint, and observational poet
• came from hull, very working class area
• found he was an outsider from his lower class background when he went to oxford, out of place as he’s working class.
• ”is a poet who speaks bleak truths”
• interested in facism and Nazism