'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
"Enid Starkie claimed that reading Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' when she was ten made her feel as though she had been taken hold of and mastered, and determined that she should be a nun when she grew up."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Enid Starkie Print: Unknown
[List of favourite things of 1945]:
'My favourite Books: The Keys of the Kingdom. The Good Companions
Authors: Daphne du Maurier
Poems: Squinency Wort. The Hound of Heaven
Writers: Shaw. Galsworthy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'On my First Communion day, November 21st 1914, I felt nothing at the actual receiving of the sacrament but in reading Francis Thompson's poems that day (my mother had bought them for me not knowing what she was giving me) I found something terrible, sweet and transforming which really did make me draw breath and pant after it...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'A programme devoted to Shelley was arranged which included readings from Adonais, the Skylark & Francis Thompson's Essay on Shelley'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
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4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its
fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis
Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
