Linden Huddlestone update

My progress in tracing the literary work of Linden Huddlestone has admittedly been slow thus far. This has been due to needing to get into the Poetry Library to consult a rare text and not being in the vicinty of the Royal Festival Hall recently when the library's been open.

I had an ideal opportunity today on the way home from Craven Cottage. There I am, at my second FA Cup tie of the season. The Swindon supporters upset the natural calm of our riverside idyll with their noisy participation but went home knowing that they've no need to check the draw for Round 4. But, well played Swindon, anyway.

A very helpful assistant found Trevor Tolley's Poetry of the Forties for me because it wasn't where it should have been. The Huddlestone reference, as found originally by Google, is on page 96 where Tolley is dealing with Dylan Thomas. He writes,

As Linden Huddlestone pointed out many years ago, religious imagery is used in the early poetry 'in a highly unorthodox way'.

The footnote then refers us to L. Huddlestone, An Approach to Dylan Thomas in Penguin New Writing 35. Since Tolley's book was published by Manchester University Press in 1985, this item is 'many years' before that. But finding that will be the next stage of this painstaking investigation. Unless, of course, you have a copy to hand and let me know.

This is a pleasing development, finding Huddlestone writing on Dylan Thomas, after my first discoveries revealed his interest in Arthurian themes.

Linden Huddlestone was our English teacher in Gloucester in the 1970's and introduced us to, amongst other things, James Joyce and Ted Hughes. The contents of the English stockroom betrayed an interest in contemporary poetry with Gunn's The Sense of Movement, my copy of which properly belongs to the school by rights, and David Jones' modernist religious efforts. It would have been easier, in retrospect, to have simply asked him about his literary interests at the time rather than try to investigate them three decades later but it never occured to me then. To younger schoolboys he might have seemed a dry old stick but he had a sense of humour and obviously a genuine interest in literature that went beyond the set book curriculum.

My enquiries will continue but if you've found this item and can add anything, please get in touch.