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Henry Reed (22 February 1914 - 8 December 1986) was a British poet, radio dramatist, translator, and critic. The author of several memorable plays commissioned for BBC radio in the 1940s and 50s, he is best known for "Naming of Parts", 'probably the most widely quoted and anthologised single poem written in the Second World War'.[1]

Contents

[edit] Life and work

Reed was born in Birmingham and educated at King Edward VI School, Aston, followed by the University of Birmingham. At university he associated with Walter Allen, Louis MacNeice and R.D. "Reggie" Smith. He went on to study for an MA and then worked as a teacher and journalist. He was called up to the Army in 1941, spending most of the war as a Japanese translator.

After the war he worked for the BBC as a radio broadcaster and playwright, where his most memorable set of productions was the Hilda Tablet series in the 1950s. The series started with A Very Great Man Indeed, which purported to be a documentary about the research for a biography of a dead poet and novelist called Richard Shewin. This drew in part on Reed's own experience of researching a biography of the novelist Thomas Hardy. However, the 'twelve-tone composeress' Hilda Tablet, a friend of the late Richard Shewin, became the most interesting character in the play and in the next play, she persuades the biographer to change the subject of the biography to her - telling him "not more than twelve volumes". Dame Hilda, as she later became, was based partly on Ethel Smyth and partly on Elisabeth Lutyens (who was not pleased, and considered legal action).

His most famous poem is "Naming of Parts", a witty parody of British army basic training during World War II, which suffered from a lack of equipment at that time. Originally published in New Statesman and Nation (August 1942), the series was later published in A Map of Verona in 1946, and was his only collection to be published within his lifetime. Another anthologised poem is "Chard Whitlow", a clever satire of T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton".

Unfortunately for Reed he was forever being confused with the much better known Sir Herbert Read; the two men were unrelated. Reed responded to this confusion by naming his alter ego biographer in the Hilda Tablet plays "Herbert Reeve" and then by having everyone else get the name slightly wrong.

[edit] Radio Plays

Plays originally broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, unless otherwise noted. Dates indicate the original broadcast.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Criticism

  • The Novel Since 1939 (1946, pamphlet)

[edit] Plays

  • Moby Dick: A Play for Radio from Herman Melville's Novel (1947)
  • Hilda Tablet and Others: Four Pieces for Radio (1971; includes: A Very Great Man Indeed; The Private Life of Hilda Tablet; A Hedge, Backwards; and The Primal Scene, As It Were)
  • The Streets of Pompeii and Other Plays for Radio (1971; includes: Leopardi: The Unblest; Leopardi: The Monument; The Streets of Pompeii; Return to Naples; The Great Desire I Had; and Vincenzo)

[edit] Poetry

  • A Map of Verona: Poems (London, 1946)
  • A Map of Verona and Other Poems (New York, 1947)
  • Lessons of the War (1970)
  • Collected Poems (1991, new edn. July, 2007)
  • The Auction Sale (2006, pamphlet)

[edit] Translations

[edit] Further reading

  • Beggs, James S. Naming of Parts: The Poetic Character of Henry Reed (1999)
  • Carpenter, Humphrey. The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3, 1946-1996 (1996)
  • Hamilton, Ian. Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets (2002)
  • Howell, Anthony. "Modernist Manqué," London Magazine (April/May 2003)
  • Savage, Roger. "The Radio Plays of Henry Reed," in British Radio Drama, ed. by John Drakakis (1981)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Scannell, Vernon (1976). Not Without Glory: Poets of the Second World War. London: Woburn Press, p. 134. ISBN 0-713-00094-5. 

[edit] External links