Wain, John

John Barrington Wain was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1925, the son of a dentist, and educated at the High School, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Ineligible for military service because of poor eyesight, Wain went up to St John's College Oxford in 1943 to read English. His tutor, C.S. Lewis, introduced him to the conservative literary group, the Inklings, although Wain remained on its periphery. His contemporaries included Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings and Kingsley Amis, with whom he was later associated in a significant strand of post-war poetry The Movement .

In 1947 Wain married and moved to Reading to work as a lecturer in English at the university. As well as teaching he developed his writing, publishing criticism, poetry and fiction. Wain's first book of poetry Mixed Feelings was published in a limited edition at Reading in 1951 and in 1953 his first novel Hurry On Down appeared and was greeted with great acclaim. Wain also did some work for the BBC on the literary magazine programme First Lines which brought him into contact with new writing and other writers.

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