Aftermath, Louis MacNeice

I picked up a couple of Louis MacNeice books when I was down in Brighton recently. MacNeice was the son of a Northern Irish protestant rector and grew up in Carrickfergus although he was sent, aged 10, to English boarding school, after his depressed mother died. His reputation is generally attached to, and overshadowed by, W. H. Auden’s, with whom he collaborated on a travel book called ‘Letters from Iceland’. Born in 1902, he died in ’63 and I am just starting to get to know his work.