An airline ticket clerk, examining the author's credit card in Seattle, asked him if he was related to the poet Stephen Spender. Assured of his customer's identity, the clerk expressed his pleasure: 'Gee, a near-celebrity.' No doubt the status of full celebrity was reserved for movie stars and ballplayers. At any rate there is little doubt that Spender is the most celebrated of living English writers, known pretty well all over the planet he has so assiduously traversed. His fame, moreover, is deep as well as wide, for he has been a celebrity for well over half a century, part of the history of every decade from the Thirties to the Eighties as well as one of its chroniclers.

LRB 5 December 1985 | PDF Download