Born in 1919, Primo Levi was a writer and poet, a Jew born in Italy who survived the holocaust of World War II. Imprisoned in Auschwitz, perhaps his most well-known work was If This is a Man which was an account of his time there. He was brought up and schooled in Turin where his […]

A Jewish poet and writer in the dark days of Nazi rule, Nelly Sachs was born in Berlin in 1891. Her father was a wealthy manufacturer and was very protective of her. Sachs suffered ill health in her childhood that meant she was tutored at home for much of the time. Her early life as […]

Born in Essex in 1906, Kathleen Raine was a poet and critic whose work had a profoundly spiritual sense that encompassed all forms of belief including Plato, Jesus and Buddha. Her time spent in Northumberland during World War I was a formative part of her life, as were the Scottish ballads and poems that were […]

Romanian poet and writer Mihai Eminescu was born in 1850 in Moldavia. He was one of the most prolific and popular poets of his age, publishing his first poem when he was only 16. His enduring masterpiece is considered to be the work Luceafărul or The Evening Star. Born into a wealthy family, Eminescu attended […]

Born in 1926 in Austria, Ingeborg Bachmann was a poet and novelist who became one of the most important writers to emerge from post war Germany. She is perhaps best known for two collections of haunting poetry, Borrowed Time and Invocation of the Great Bear. An ardent anti-fascist who hated it when Hitler’s troops marched […]