Enright, D(enis) J(oseph) (1920-2002)

English poet, novelist, and editor. His style is characterized by a clarity of language and form; by a witty, ironic, and almost conversational tone; and by a concern with moral and social issues, notably social inequality and political oppression. His collections include Bread Rather Than Blossoms (1956), Foreign Devils (1972), and Old Men and Comets (1993). His first novel, Academic Year, appeared in 1955.

He studied at Cambridge in the 1940s, where he was influenced by the critic F R Leavis, and later taught in Egypt, Japan, Thailand, and the UK. During the 1950s he became closely associated with a group of British poets known as ‘the Movement’, which included Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin.