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Rex Warner

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Rex Warner(9 March 1905 – 24 June 1986) was an Englishclassicist,writer, and translator. He is now probably best remembered forThe Aerodrome(1941).[1][2]Warner was described byV. S. Pritchettas "the only outstanding novelist of ideas whom the decade of ideas produced".[3]

Biographical sketch[edit]

He was bornReginald Ernest WarnerinBirmingham,England, and brought up mainly inGloucestershire,where his father was a clergyman.[4]He was educated at St. George's School inHarpendenand atWadham College, Oxford,where he associated withW. H. Auden,Cecil Day-Lewis,andStephen Spenderand published inOxford Poetry.[5]He obtained a 1st inClassical Moderationsin 1925 and later graduated with a 3rd in English in 1928.[6]He then spent time teaching, some of it inEgypt.

Warner's debut story, "Holiday", appeared in theNew Statesmanin 1930.[5]His first collection,Poems,appeared in 1937. His poem, "Arms in Spain", a satire onGermanandItaliansupport for theSpanish Nationalists,has often been reprinted.[7]He was also a contributor toLeft Review.Warner was a great admirer ofFranz Kafkaand his fiction was "profoundly influenced" by Kafka's work.[4]Warner's first three novels all reflect hisanti-fascistbeliefs;The Wild Goose Chaseis in part adystopianfantasy about the overthrow of a tyrannical government in a heroic revolution.[8][9]His second novel,The Professor,published around the time of theNaziAnschluss,is the story of a liberal academic whose compromises with a repressive government lead eventually to his arrest, imprisonment and murder "while attempting to escape". Contemporary reviewers saw parallels with the Austrian leadersEngelbert DollfussandKurt Schuschnigg.[2][8]

Although Warner was initially sympathetic to theSoviet Union,"theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pactleft him disillusioned with Communism ".[5]The Aerodromeis anallegoricalnovel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones, and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home village and the pure, efficient, emotionally detached life of an airman.[2]The TimesdescribedThe Aerodromeas Warner's "most perfectly accomplished novel".[4] Why Was I Killed?(1943) is an afterlife fantasy with an anti-war theme.[5]

Warner then abandoned contemporary allegory in favour ofhistorical novelsaboutAncient GreeceandRome,includingImperial Caesar,for which he was awarded the 1960James Tait Black Memorial Prizefor fiction.Imperial Caesarwas praised byJohn Davenportas "delightfully perceptive and funny", and byStorm Jamesonas "brilliant, intelligent, continuously interesting. It has everything."[10]The Converts,a novel aboutSaint Augustine,reflected Warner's own increasing devotion to Christianity.[4]He dedicated it to the Greek poet and diplomatGeorge Seferis.

Warner served in theHome Guardduring the Second World War and also worked as a Latin teacher at a Grammar School in Morden as there was a shortage of teachers.[4]From 1945 to 1947 he was inAthensas Director of the British Institute. At that time he became involved in numerous translations of classical Greek and Latin authors. His translation ofThucydides'History of the Peloponnesian Warfor Penguin Classics sold over a million copies.[5]He also translatedPoems of George Seferis(1960).

Warner's time in Greece coincided with the early stages of theGreek Civil War,which ended with the Greek Communists defeated and suppressed. This formed the background to his book"Men of Stones: A Melodrama"(1949), depicting imprisoned leftists presentingKing Learin their prison camp.

In 1961 Warner was appointed Tallman Professor of Classics atBowdoin Collegeand from 1962 to 1973 he was a professor at theUniversity of Connecticut.While he was in the United States he was interviewed for the bookAuthors Take Sides onVietnam(1967) and argued for withdrawal from Indochina.[11]

Rex Warner retired to England in 1973 and died inWallingford, Oxfordshirein 1986.

Personal life[edit]

Warner was married three times, but to only two women. His first marriage was to Frances Chamier Grove, in 1929.[4]Their marriage ended in divorce and in 1949 Warner married Barbara, Lady Rothschild, formerly the wife ofBaron Victor Rothschild.[4]After his second divorce, in 1966, he remarried his first wife.[3]Warner and his wife Frances had three children. He had further children including a daughter Anne, who wrote about the relationship between Warner and her mother (when he was not married) in the book 'The Blind Horse of Corfu'.

Works[edit]

Novels[edit]

  • The Wild Goose Chase(1937)
  • The Professor(1938)
  • The Aerodrome(1941)
  • Why Was I Killed?(1943) (US title:Return of the Traveller(1944))
  • Men of Stones; A melodrama(1949)
  • Escapade(1953)
  • Young Caesar(1958)
  • Imperial Caesar(1960)
  • Pericles the Athenian(1963)
  • The Converts(1967)

Collections of Poems[edit]

Non-fiction[edit]

  • The Kite(1936)
  • We're Not Going To Do Nothing: A Reply to MrAldous Huxley's Pamphlet "What Are You Going to Do About It?"(1936); (withCecil Day-Lewis)
  • English Public Schools(1945)
  • The Cult of Power(1946)
  • John Milton(1949)
  • E. M. Forster(1950, 2nd edition 1960) (with John Morris)
  • Men and Gods(1950)
  • Greeks and Trojans(1951)
  • Views of Attica(1951)
  • Ashes to Ashes: A Post-Mortem on the 1940–51 Tests(1951) (withLyle Blair);
  • Eternal Greece(1953) with Martin Hürlimann
  • Athens(1956) with Martin Hürlimann
  • The Greek Philosophers(1958)
  • Look at Birds(1962)
  • The Stories of the Greeks(1967)
  • Athens at War(1970) a "retelling" of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War
  • Men of Athens: The Story of Fifth-Century Athens(vt.The Story of Fifth-Century Athens) (1972) (with photographs byDimitrios Harissiadis)

Translations from Ancient Greek[edit]

Translations from Latin[edit]

  • War Commentaries of Caesar(1960) Gallic & Civil Wars
  • The Confessions ofSt. Augustine(1963)

Translation from Modern Greek[edit]

  • On the Greek Style: Selected Essays in Poetry and Hellenismby George Seferis, translated by Rex Warner andT. D. Frangopoulos,with an introduction by Rex Warner. (1967)

As editor[edit]

Film and TV adaptations[edit]

In 1983 theBBCscreened an adaptation ofThe Aerodrome.It was written byRobin Chapmanand directed byGiles Foster.The cast includedPeter Firthas Roy, the protagonist,Richard Briersas the Rector andJill Bennettas Eustasia.

References[edit]

  1. ^Trash Fiction: Review ofThe Aerodrome
  2. ^abcChris Hopkins,English Fiction in the 1930s: Language, Genre, HistoryContinuum International Publishing Group, 2007ISBN0826489389(pp. 138–57).
  3. ^ab"Rex Warner, 81, Dies; Author and Translator".The New York Times,17 July 1986
  4. ^abcdefg"Rex Warner(Obituary)".The Times.27 June 1986.
  5. ^abcdeMichael Moorcock,"Introduction" toThe Aerodrome,Vintage Classics, 2007.ISBN9780099511564(p. ix–xx)
  6. ^Oxford University Calendar 1932.Oxford University Press, 1932.(pp. 270, 310)
  7. ^Katharine Bail Hoskins,Today the Struggle: Literature and Politics in England during the Spanish Civil War.University of Texas Press, 1969 (p.230)
  8. ^abJanet Montefiore.Men and Women writers of the 1930s: The Dangerous Flood of History.Routledge, 1996.ISBN0415068924(pp. 16, 170, 201).
  9. ^John Clute,"Warner, Rex", inThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,edited by Clute andPeter Nicholls.London, Orbit,1994.ISBN1-85723-124-4(p.1299-1300).
  10. ^Advertisement forImperial Caesar,Encounter,November 1960, p. 81.
  11. ^Cecil WoolfandJohn Bagguley(editors),Authors Take Sides on Vietnam,Peter Owen, 1967,(p.47).

Further reading[edit]

  • Politics in the Novels of Rex Warner(1974) James Flynn
  • The Novels of Rex Warner: An Introduction(1989) N. H. Reeve
  • Fiercer Than Tigers: The Life and Works of Rex Warner(2002) Stephen E. Tabachnick

External links[edit]

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