Anthony Thwaite was a prolific English poet, critic and broadcaster, widely known for his editing and commentary on the collected poems and letters of his friend, Philip Larkin. After National Service at Leptis Magna in Libya, Thwaite came up to Christ Church in 1952 to study English Literature and Language. At Oxford, he edited the weekly magazine Isis and was president of the Poetry Society. Whilst still an undergraduate, Thwaite devoted a great deal of time to his own writing and his first poetry pamphlet was published by the Fantasy Press in 1953. He held academic appointments, including at the University of Tokyo; at the University of Libya in Benghazi; at the University of East Anglia; and at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Thwaite had poems published in The Listener, The New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement, and book reviews and articles in The Spectator. Thwaite’s published poetry includes Home Truths (1957), The Owl in the Tree (1963), The Stones of Emptiness: Poems 1963-66 (1967), which won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize, Inscriptions (1973), New Confessions (1974), A Portion for Foxes (1977), and Victorian Voices (1980) as well as a number of collected works.

Recently published by Baylor University Press, At the Garden’s Dark Edge is a collection of a hundred of Thwaite’s poems, selected from a span of more than sixty years, exploring his major themes and recurring topics. Thwaite was inspired by travel and life abroad--most notably Libya, Japan, and the American South--and his poems deeply engage the individuals and cultures he encountered. At the Garden’s Dark Edge contains several poems that have never been reprinted or collected, and one that has never before been published.  A preface by the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn accompanies the introduction by the editor, Kevin J. Gardner, Professor of English at Baylor University.

Ann and Anthony Thwaite met while studying at Oxford in 1952 and married in 1955. Ann is a biographer, including of the authors Frances Hodgson Burnett, Edmund Gosse and A.A. Milne; an author of children's books; and a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. Her A.A. Milne biography was the Whitbread Biography of the Year in 1990.

Ann Thwaite records: "My husband and I met at Oxford as exact contemporaries 1952-1955. He had some difficulty passing the Latin he needed to take up his Open Scholarship and had a year off after his National Service, before going up to Christ Church, aged 22.  At one stage Anthony was editor of Isis, I was Features Editor, he was President of the Poetry Society and I was Treasurer. On going down he had the choice of three jobs: one on the then Manchester Guardian, one as a graduate trainee at the BBC and one as a Visiting Lecturer at Tokyo University. We opted for Japan and he was then told he could start at the BBC in two years time."

Ann also recalls in The Player King by Christopher Hassall in the Cloisters in the summer of 1953 and toured Germany afterwards with the Christ Church Drama Society, which at that time included Christopher Driver, Mark Elwes, John Grundon, Anthony Howard, Nigel Lawson, and was directed by Bruce Laughland (later QC).

Members might also be interested in Poems for Anthony Thwaite, a bound volume of manuscript poems dedicated to Anthony Thwaite on his 50th birthday, 23 June 1980 and now held by the Bodleian Libraries with further details available here.

To mark the publication of At the Garden’s Dark Edge (Baylor University Press, 2024), there will be a poetry reading introduced by Dr Kevin Gardner at St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens, London W2 3UD on Friday 25 April at 6pm.