![]() He mixed with locals, and could be adventurous in his enthusiasm for indigenous customs. But in Alexandria (1947-50) - where he met his French wife, Madeleine - he found life a good deal more attractive than in ration-book Britain. He taught overseas - mainly in south Asian universities from 1947 to 1970 - by default: as a disciple of Leavis he could not get a job in British universities. His tutor's idea that literature can and should enlarge our moral universe was one that never left him. When, in his 50s, he wrote about his working-class, Black Country upbringing, in the excellent, anecdotal The Terrible Shears (1973), even when recounting social snobbery, he remains affectionate, wry: "How docile the lower orders were/ In those days! Having done/ Unexpectedly well in the School Cert,/ I was advised by the headmaster to leave school/ At once and get a job before they found/ A mistake in the examination results."Įnright was taught at Downing College, Cambridge, by FR Leavis and contributed to the magazine Scrutiny. ![]() His father was Irish and a postman, his mother Welsh and a chapel-goer. But the real affection was for the man: gentle-mannered but uncompromising, tough-minded but humane, above all funny - a person for whom the adjective "sardonic" was invented.Įnright was born in Leamington. ![]() That affection was stirred by the intelligence and integrity he brought to a range of writing: his novel Academic Year (1955), his Memoirs Of A Mendicant Professor (1969), his essays, reviews, anthologies and children's books. ![]()
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