Alan Ross Biography

British poet and editor, born in Calcutta, educated at St John's College, Oxford. His wartime experiences on the Murmansk convoys are memorably dealt with in the verse of Something of the Sea (1954). In 1945 and 1947 he was in Germany with the Naval Staff; The Derelict Day: Poems in Germany (1947) reflects the atmospheres of defeat and bewilderment he encountered. In 1961 he became editor of The London Magazine and founded London Magazine Editions in 1965. His numerous later collections of poetry include To Whom It May Concern (1958), African Negatives (1962), Poems 1942–1967 (1967), The Taj Express (1973), and Death Valley (1980). Much of his verse, in which rigorously objective description combines to incisive effect with a mood of disenchanted detachment, draws on his extensive travels in Europe, Africa, America, and elsewhere. He also wrote travel books, among them Time Was Away: A Notebook in Corsica (1948) and The Bandit at the Billiard Table (1954), an account of Sardinia. His numerous works on sport include The West Indies at Lords (1963) and, as editor, The Cricketer's Companion (1960) and The Turf (1982). Blindfold Games (1986) and Coastwise Lights (1988) are autobiographical.