"They were frank, and could be abrasive. They were the new people. Hobsbaum was a Cambridge graduate, a student of the great and fearsome F. R. Leavis. He taught and inspired a future Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, at Tulse Hill Comprehensive. Redgrove was already a passionate and prolific Cambridge poet. He had been a scientist, and was now a brilliantly-talented no-nonsense mystic. Bell was a little older, an unhappy West London English teacher with a love of European poetry that was requited in his own work. He had been in the army for absolutely all of the Second World War. Porter came from Brisbane, worked in a famous London bookshop, seemed to have a daunting but lightly-wom knowledge of everything, and was approachable, and was interested in you." Alan Brownjohn • TLS

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