He was an essential part of a Yorkshire triumvirate that included the sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and he is among the 16 Great War poets commemorated in Westminster Abbey – yet outside the Howardian Hills that he loved, the name of Sir Herbert Read is scarcely spoken.
Next week marks the 50th anniversary of his death, but it is being marked not at the British Museum or the Tate, but in the relative backwater of the lending libraries in Malton and Helmsley, curated by two retired teachers. There will be no keynote lectures or red-carpet visitations – just an hour set aside for a chat with the organisers.
Sir Herbert – the knighthood came in 1952 for services to literature – was not only a writer but also a publisher, the first to propagate the works of TS Eliot, and a noted anarchist who campaigned on behalf of political prisoners in Franco’s Spain.
