Kenneth Adolf Slessor was born in Orange, New South Wales in 1901 to parents of German-Jewish origin.  The family name was originally Schloesser and they moved to Sydney when Kenneth was two years old.  The young boy loved to read and was encouraged by his parents to do so, along with teaching him to love […]

Considered one of the greatest Polish literary figures Czeslaw Milosz was born the 30th June 1911 to a Catholic family in the small village of Szetejnie, which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His father Aleksander was a qualified civil engineer, whilst his mother Weronika was of noble descent.  Fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, […]

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American doctor, poet, professor and author.  Born 29th August 1809 in Cambridge, in Massachusetts USA he was the firstborn son to Sarah Wendell, who came from a wealthy family  and Abiel Holmes, a Calvinist Church minister.  His son of the same name would go on to be a prominent […]

Phillip Edward Thomas is one of the names on a slate stone in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey, which commemorates the sixteen “Great War Poets”.  It is alongside the likes of Wilfred Own and Rupert Brooke, so Thomas’s name will therefore be immortalised as a war poet although most of his work was written before he […]

Festus Claudius McKay was born in September 1889 in Jamaica. His parents were well off but still classed as peasant farmers, although being landowners of sufficient standing they had the vote.  His father’s roots were in Western Africa – the Ashanti people – while his mother’s were in Madagascar. Claude’s early years were spent happily […]