Spencer, Bernard, 1909-

Bernard Spencer was born in 1909 in Madras where his father, Sir Charles Gordon Spencer, was a High Court Judge. Bernard's health was delicate so at the age of 18 months he was sent back to England to join his older sister and brother. They were brought up by a variety of clergy relatives and guardians in Southampton, Oxfordshire and Gosport. In 1923 Bernard followed his brother to Marlborough and managed to pursue his interest in poetry and drawing in the company of John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice among others. Later the three of them were at Oxford together where Bernard also became friends with Stephen Spender, Arthur Calder-Marshall and Isaiah Berlin. Tall, handsome and charming, Bernard was involved in the Oxford literary scene, contributing poems to several magazines edited by his contemporaries, but he was reticent about claiming an identity as a poet.

Leaving Oxford in 1932 with a second-class degree in Greats, Bernard Spencer moved to London and made a precarious living in a variety of jobs as a schoolmaster, an advertising copy-writer, a film script-writer and a biographer. He continued to write poetry, although his output was never large and from 1935-1938 he contributed to and helped to edit New Verse . His father died in 1934 and his mother in 1936 and in the same year he married Nora Gibbs, a tall striking actress in provincial repertory. On the outbreak of the Second World War Bernard applied for a job with the British Council, for which he worked, mainly abroad, for the rest of his life, and in 1940 he and Norah set out for Salonika. Although, in the face of the German advance, Norah soon returned to London and Bernard was transferred to Egypt in early 1941, Greece made a great and lasting impression on him and on his writing.

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