W.H. Auden once revealed his 'life-long conviction that in any company I am the youngest person present.' This confession, made when he was 58, perhaps raised a shifty smile among those of his acolytes who had grown used to the crotchety, old-womanish persona of his later years - the early nights, the carpet slippers, and so on. Old when young and young when old: the ageing of our most-wrinkled-ever poet has always seemed a somewhat mysterious process.

LRB 8 September 1994 | PDF Download