Description
Book SynopsisFollowing the acclaimed first volume, Among the Mandarins , this is the second and concluding volume of the authorized biography of William Empson, one of the foremost poets and literary critics of the twentieth century.Against the Christians begins during the Second World War and follows Empson''s turbulent years of writing wartime propaganda for the BBC. As Chinese Editor, he organised broadcasts to China and propaganda programmes for the Home Service, during which time his friends and colleagues included the prickly George Orwell. The effectiveness of Empson''s work for the BBC provoked the Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche to call him a ''curly-headed Jew'' -- a charge which gave him enormous satisfaction.In 1947 he returned to China, where he was caught up in the Communist siege of the Peking and witnessed Mao Tse-tung''s triumphant entry. ''I was there for the honeymoon between the universities and the communists; we were being kept up to the mark rather firmly.'' He saw ''the dra
Trade ReviewJohn 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 *
Table of Contents1. 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. Menage 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
