C. Day Lewis, born in Ireland in 1904, was Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in May 1972. He published many volumes of poetry, as well as essays, critical studies, translations of Virgil and Valery, and twenty crime novels written under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. A popular broadcaster, lecturer and reader of poetry, he was Clark Lecturer at Cambridge (1946), Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1951-56), Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard (1964-65), and Compton Lecturer at Hull University (1968). He was awarded a CBE and was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.Jill Balcon has had a distinguished broadcasting career for over sixty years and is well known for her public readings of poetry in the UK, Europe and America. She is the editor of the Posthumous Poems and The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis.