F. L. Lucas
Encyclopedia
Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
.
He is now best remembered for his scathing attacks on the poetry of T. S. Eliot during the 1920s and for his book Style (1955), a much-acclaimed guide to recognising and writing good prose. His Tragedy (1927, substantially revised in 1957) was till the late twentieth century a standard introduction to Aristotle's Poetics. His most important contribution to scholarship was his four-volume Complete Works of John Webster
(1927), the first collected edition of the Jacobean dramatist since that of Hazlitt (1857), itself largely a copy of Dyce (1830). T. S. Eliot called Lucas “the perfect annotator”; and all subsequent Webster scholars have been indebted to him, notably the editors of the new Cambridge
Webster (1995–2007).
of the twentieth century, and used his Cambridge lectures and writing to champion timeless civilised values and to campaign for a responsible use of intellectual freedom. “One may question whether real civilisation is so safely afloat,” he wrote in his last published letter, “that we can afford to use our pens for boring holes in the bottom of it.”
What Lucas wrote about Housman’s Name and Nature of Poetry in 1933 sums up what he himself aspired to as a literary critic: “… the kind of critical writing that best justifies itself before the brevity of life; that itself adds new data to our experience as well as arguing about the old; that happily combines, in a word, philosophy with autobiography, psychology with a touch of poetry – of the ‘poetic’ imagination. It can make acceptable even common sense. There are sentences here which recall the clear-cut Doric strength of the Lives of the Poets
...”
Lucas was a formidable controversialist, and his impatience with the obscurantism of much modern poetry made him in the interwar years one of the foremost opponents of the new schools. “As for ‘profundity’,” he wrote, “it is not uncommonly found also in dry wells; which may likewise contain little but obscurity and rubbish.” He opposed also what he saw as the narrow dogmatism of the New Critics
, those "tight-lipped Calvins of art", as he called them, of Criterion
and Scrutiny
.
Steeped in Greek and Latin literature, Lucas dedicated much of his time to making accessible to modern readers the most living portions of the classics through verse translations. His Greek Poetry (1951, Everyman Library 1966) and Greek Drama (1954) (many reprints) were praised for their grace and fidelity, and were hailed by reviewers as “Cambridge’s single-handed answer to the [collaborative] Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation”. With introductions and notes it was a monumental project – nothing on this scale had been attempted by a single translator before, or has since. His versions pre-suppose, however, an understanding of metre and the caesura, and a taste for a poetic style closer to Morris than to Pound.
, 24 May 1930). “For grace and style and insight into character,” wrote Kathleen Tomlinson, “Cécile is reminiscent of Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin. Only reminiscent, for Mr Lucas has a more profound philosophy, or wisdom, and is not content with the challenge and interplay of the individual, but extends his psychological understanding to classes and nations.” Vita Sackville-West
also praised the novel: "It seemed to me to be full of the deepest and truest feeling," she wrote, "never sentimental, but always convincing and extremely moving. The relationship between Andrée and Gaston is admirably true to nature. No-one could fail to be moved by this picture of a woman struggling against her own love for a husband who disappoints and betrays her at every turn." Lucas dedicated the novel to T. E. Lawrence
, a friend and admirer.
As a poet Lucas was a polished ironist. Early collections were mostly personal lyrics or satires, but he came to specialise in dramatic monologues and narrative poems based on historical episodes “that seem lastingly alive”. His First World War poems, including ‘Morituri - August 1915, on the road from Morlancourt’ (1935) and the exquisite ‘ ”The Night is Chilly but not Dark” ‘ (1935), offer a retrospect of his experiences at the front. If they lack the stark immediacy of Owen
or Rosenberg
, they nevertheless add poignant post-war perspectives. Its appearance in various mid-twentieth century anthologies of English verse has made ‘Beleaguered Cities’ (1929) Lucas’s best-known poem. Others that have gained a wider currency through anthologies include ‘The Destined Hour’ (1953), a memorable re-telling in verse of the old ‘appointment in Samarra’
fable, and ‘Spain 1809’, the story of a village woman's courage during the French occupation in the Peninsular War
. His most ambitious poem was Ariadne (1932), an epic re-working of the Labyrinth
myth. Simon Tidworth in The Quest for Theseus summarises: “Lucas invents another sweetheart for Theseus
, Aegle, one of the sacrificial maidens who accompany him to Crete. The real stroke of originality is to make the Minotaur Minos himself in a bull-mask. On Naxos Ariadne
learns of Theseus’s earlier love for Aegle, and decides to leave him while the image of her own love is still fresh. An ordinary love-affair is not what she wants; she has to seek the Ideal [Dionysus].”
Lucas's most successful play was the thriller Land's End (Westminster Theatre
, Feb.-March 1938, 29 performances, with Cathleen Nesbitt
, Cecil Trouncer and Alan Napier
among the cast) – "as full of drama as an egg is full of meat", noted The Stage
. The Bear Dances: A Play in Three Acts was the first dramatisation of the Soviets on London’s West-end stage
(Garrick Theatre
, Oct.-Nov. 1932, with Elena Miramova
, Abraham Sofaer
and Olga Lindo
). This play, which was revived by various repertory theatres in the North of England in the later 1930s, was written at a time when Cambridge University (in his words) “grew full of very green young men going very Red”.
(48 B.C.), based on his 1921 solo field-trip to Thessaly and on a re-examination of the sources, is now widely accepted by historians. John D. Morgan in his definitive “Palae-pharsalus – the Battle and the Town” writes: “My reconstruction is similar to Lucas’s, and in fact I borrow one of his alternatives for the line of the Pompeian retreat. Lucas’s theory has been subjected to many criticisms, but has remained essentially unshaken.”
In the 1930s Lucas was widely known for his outspoken attacks in the British Press on appeasement
. “Since the War,” he wrote in 1933, “British policy has been shuffling, timid, ignoble.” He urged in September of that year that Nazi Germany be prevented from re-arming. "Versailles
was monstrous", he wrote in The Week-end Review,
And in 1937: “We have not kept agreements we made; we have made agreements we should not; we have tried to cheat our way to security, and now the security proves a cheat. We have forgotten the wisdom which says that since we cannot foresee where any road will lead in the end, we should stick to the straight and honest one.” He argued that a hatred of war “can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ‘peace’ where there is none.” Despite the prevailing pacifism of the time, such sentiments struck a chord. “This is the voice of the England I love,” wrote a correspondent from Prague in 1938, “and for whose soul I was trembling when I heard about the welcome given Mr Chamberlain on his return from Munich.” As well as the letters there were articles, satires, books, public speaking, fund-raising, petitions, meetings with émigrés and help for refugees. As a leading anti-fascist campaigner in the thirties, Lucas was placed by the Nazis on their Special Search List G.B.
of Britons to be arrested and liquidated.
A brilliant linguist with infantry and Intelligence Corps experience from 1914–18, proven anti-fascist credentials and a scepticism about the Soviet Union, Lucas was one of the first academics recruited by the Foreign Office – on 3rd September 1939 – to Bletchley Park
. He was one of the original three members of Hut 3 and remained a central figure there, working on the Enigma
decodes as a translator and intelligence-analyst. The high standards of accuracy and clarity that prevailed in Hut 3, his chief maintained, were "largely due to his being such a stickler" for them. Lucas was awarded the O.B.E in 1946 for his wartime work.
and was educated at Colfe's and at Rugby
, where he was tutored by the Sophocles
scholar Robert Whitelaw. A prize-winning Classics scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge
from 1913, Lucas was elected Apostle
in January 1914 and came under the influence of G. E. Moore. He volunteered in October 1914, and from 1915-18 served with the Royal West Kent Regiment in France, returning to the front twice after spending seventeen months in hospitals recovering from gas and shell wounds. In the last months of war he was in the Intelligence Corps, examining German prisoners. Elected to a Fellowship at King's College in 1920, he began his career as a Classics lecturer, switching in 1922 to the newly-formed Cambridge University English faculty, of which he was a member from 1922–1939 and from 1945–1962. His move from Classics to English and his edition of John Webster were inspired in part by the seminal 1920 Marlowe Society
production of The White Devil
, but his loyalties lay from first to last with Comparative literature
. His students at King's included George Rylands, John Hayward
, F. E. Halliday
, Alan Clutton-Brock, Julian Bell
, Desmond Flower and Christopher Burstall. From 1921 to 1929 he was married to the novelist E. B. C. Jones, niece of Robbie Ross; she based the character Hugh Sexton in The Singing Captives (1922) on Lucas. Through her and the Apostles he was associated with the Bloomsbury Group
, Virginia Woolf describing him to Ottoline Morrell as "pure Cambridge: clean as a breadknife, and as sharp". To Lucas, interviewed in 1958, Bloomsbury seemed "a jungle":
Lucas's travel writings, accounts of long walks through wild landscapes with literary associations (Greece, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, France), date from the years of his second marriage, 1932-1939, to the artist Prudence Wilkinson, who shared this interest and who also designed the costumes and sets for some of his plays, including the first production of his Icelandic tragedy The Lovers of Gudrun
. The emphasis on psychology in his post-war books – Literature and Psychology, The Search for Good Sense, The Art of Living, the essay on 'Happiness' in The Greatest Problem – reflects an interest shared with his third wife, the Swedish psychologist Elna Kallenberg, whom he married in 1940.
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
.
He is now best remembered for his scathing attacks on the poetry of T. S. Eliot during the 1920s and for his book Style (1955), a much-acclaimed guide to recognising and writing good prose. His Tragedy (1927, substantially revised in 1957) was till the late twentieth century a standard introduction to Aristotle's Poetics. His most important contribution to scholarship was his four-volume Complete Works of John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
(1927), the first collected edition of the Jacobean dramatist since that of Hazlitt (1857), itself largely a copy of Dyce (1830). T. S. Eliot called Lucas “the perfect annotator”; and all subsequent Webster scholars have been indebted to him, notably the editors of the new Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
Webster (1995–2007).
Literary criticism and verse translation
The poets to whom Lucas returned most often in his publications were Tennyson (1930, 1932, 1947, 1957) and Housman (1926, 1933, 1936, 1960); these are among his most sensitive studies. He adopted the contextual approach at a time when it was considered a heresy (it is now orthodoxy again), including biographical detail and discussing the “psychology” of writers. Ever conscious that literature could influence for good or ill, he admired authors who were defenders of sanity and good sense – men like Montaigne and Johnson – or compassionate realists, like Homer in the Iliad, Euripides, Hardy, Ibsen and Chekhov. “Life is ‘indivisible’,” he wrote. “A public tends to get the literature it deserves: a literature, to get the public it deserves. The values men pursue in each, affect the other. They turn in a vicious, or a virtuous, circle. Only a fine society could have bred Homer: and he left it finer for hearing him.” Lucas condemned the trahisons des clercsJulien Benda
Julien Benda was a French philosopher and novelist. He remains famous for his essay The Betrayal of the Intellectuals.- Life :...
of the twentieth century, and used his Cambridge lectures and writing to champion timeless civilised values and to campaign for a responsible use of intellectual freedom. “One may question whether real civilisation is so safely afloat,” he wrote in his last published letter, “that we can afford to use our pens for boring holes in the bottom of it.”
What Lucas wrote about Housman’s Name and Nature of Poetry in 1933 sums up what he himself aspired to as a literary critic: “… the kind of critical writing that best justifies itself before the brevity of life; that itself adds new data to our experience as well as arguing about the old; that happily combines, in a word, philosophy with autobiography, psychology with a touch of poetry – of the ‘poetic’ imagination. It can make acceptable even common sense. There are sentences here which recall the clear-cut Doric strength of the Lives of the Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets was a work by Samuel Johnson, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century...
...”
Lucas was a formidable controversialist, and his impatience with the obscurantism of much modern poetry made him in the interwar years one of the foremost opponents of the new schools. “As for ‘profundity’,” he wrote, “it is not uncommonly found also in dry wells; which may likewise contain little but obscurity and rubbish.” He opposed also what he saw as the narrow dogmatism of the New Critics
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
, those "tight-lipped Calvins of art", as he called them, of Criterion
The Criterion (magazine)
The Criterion was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. The Criterion was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927-28 it was published monthly. It was created by the poet, dramatist, and literary critic T. S...
and Scrutiny
Scrutiny (journal)
Scrutiny: A Quarterly Review was a literature periodical founded in 1932 by F. R. Leavis, who remained its principal editor until the final issue in 1953...
.
Steeped in Greek and Latin literature, Lucas dedicated much of his time to making accessible to modern readers the most living portions of the classics through verse translations. His Greek Poetry (1951, Everyman Library 1966) and Greek Drama (1954) (many reprints) were praised for their grace and fidelity, and were hailed by reviewers as “Cambridge’s single-handed answer to the [collaborative] Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation”. With introductions and notes it was a monumental project – nothing on this scale had been attempted by a single translator before, or has since. His versions pre-suppose, however, an understanding of metre and the caesura, and a taste for a poetic style closer to Morris than to Pound.
Original writing
The scholar’s wit and verve that mark Lucas’s literary studies are present in his creative work. Of his novels the best received was Cécile (1930), a “tenderly brilliant story of France on the eve of the Revolution” (New StatesmanNew Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, 24 May 1930). “For grace and style and insight into character,” wrote Kathleen Tomlinson, “Cécile is reminiscent of Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin. Only reminiscent, for Mr Lucas has a more profound philosophy, or wisdom, and is not content with the challenge and interplay of the individual, but extends his psychological understanding to classes and nations.” Vita Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West
The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
also praised the novel: "It seemed to me to be full of the deepest and truest feeling," she wrote, "never sentimental, but always convincing and extremely moving. The relationship between Andrée and Gaston is admirably true to nature. No-one could fail to be moved by this picture of a woman struggling against her own love for a husband who disappoints and betrays her at every turn." Lucas dedicated the novel to T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
, a friend and admirer.
As a poet Lucas was a polished ironist. Early collections were mostly personal lyrics or satires, but he came to specialise in dramatic monologues and narrative poems based on historical episodes “that seem lastingly alive”. His First World War poems, including ‘Morituri - August 1915, on the road from Morlancourt’ (1935) and the exquisite ‘ ”The Night is Chilly but not Dark” ‘ (1935), offer a retrospect of his experiences at the front. If they lack the stark immediacy of Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
or Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...
, they nevertheless add poignant post-war perspectives. Its appearance in various mid-twentieth century anthologies of English verse has made ‘Beleaguered Cities’ (1929) Lucas’s best-known poem. Others that have gained a wider currency through anthologies include ‘The Destined Hour’ (1953), a memorable re-telling in verse of the old ‘appointment in Samarra’
Samarra
Sāmarrā is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700....
fable, and ‘Spain 1809’, the story of a village woman's courage during the French occupation in the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
. His most ambitious poem was Ariadne (1932), an epic re-working of the Labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
myth. Simon Tidworth in The Quest for Theseus summarises: “Lucas invents another sweetheart for Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
, Aegle, one of the sacrificial maidens who accompany him to Crete. The real stroke of originality is to make the Minotaur Minos himself in a bull-mask. On Naxos Ariadne
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
learns of Theseus’s earlier love for Aegle, and decides to leave him while the image of her own love is still fresh. An ordinary love-affair is not what she wants; she has to seek the Ideal [Dionysus].”
Lucas's most successful play was the thriller Land's End (Westminster Theatre
Westminster Theatre
The Westminster Theatre was a London theatre, on Palace Street in Westminster. It was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, which was altered and given a new frontage for use as a cinema from 1924 onwards. It finally became a theatre in 1931 after radical alterations...
, Feb.-March 1938, 29 performances, with Cathleen Nesbitt
Cathleen Nesbitt
Cathleen Mary Nesbitt, CBE was an English stage and film actress.-Biography:Born in Cheshire, England in 1888, of Welsh and Irish descent, Nesbitt was educated in Lisieux, France, and at the Queen's University of Belfast and the Sorbonne...
, Cecil Trouncer and Alan Napier
Alan Napier
Alan William Napier-Clavering was an English actor, best known for portraying Alfred Pennyworth in the 1960s live-action Batman television series.-Early life and career:...
among the cast) – "as full of drama as an egg is full of meat", noted The Stage
The Stage
The Stage is a weekly British newspaper founded in 1880, available nationally and published on Thursdays. Covering all areas of the entertainment industry but focused primarily on theatre, it contains news, reviews, opinion, features and other items of interest, mainly to those who work within the...
. The Bear Dances: A Play in Three Acts was the first dramatisation of the Soviets on London’s West-end stage
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
(Garrick Theatre
Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a...
, Oct.-Nov. 1932, with Elena Miramova
Elena Miramova
-Beginnings and training:Elena Miramova was born in 1901 in Tsaritsyn, Russian Empire , and emigrated to New York City with a brother who died when she was eleven years old...
, Abraham Sofaer
Abraham Sofaer
Abraham Sofaer was a stage actor of Burmese-Jewish descent who became a familiar supporting player on film and television in his later years. He was born in Rangoon, Burma...
and Olga Lindo
Olga Lindo
-Filmography:* The Shadow Between * Royal Cavalcade * Dark World * The Last Journey * A Romance in Flanders * Luck of the Navy * The Stars Look Down * What Men Live By...
). This play, which was revived by various repertory theatres in the North of England in the later 1930s, was written at a time when Cambridge University (in his words) “grew full of very green young men going very Red”.
History and politics
Outside literature, Lucas is remembered for his solution to one of the more contentious problems of ancient topography. His “north-bank” thesis on the location of the Battle of PharsalusBattle of Pharsalus
The Battle of Pharsalus was a decisive battle of Caesar's Civil War. On 9 August 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, Gaius Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the republic under the command of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus...
(48 B.C.), based on his 1921 solo field-trip to Thessaly and on a re-examination of the sources, is now widely accepted by historians. John D. Morgan in his definitive “Palae-pharsalus – the Battle and the Town” writes: “My reconstruction is similar to Lucas’s, and in fact I borrow one of his alternatives for the line of the Pompeian retreat. Lucas’s theory has been subjected to many criticisms, but has remained essentially unshaken.”
In the 1930s Lucas was widely known for his outspoken attacks in the British Press on appeasement
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
. “Since the War,” he wrote in 1933, “British policy has been shuffling, timid, ignoble.” He urged in September of that year that Nazi Germany be prevented from re-arming. "Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
was monstrous", he wrote in The Week-end Review,
- "but one thing surely comes first: Germany must not be allowed to re-arm. How prevent it? By an international police-force? It would be ideal. Unfortunately it does not exist. The French have urged it. We in our muddle-headedness want neither it nor the alternative – war. Are we prepared to see France do its work instead and take action in Germany? – or are we going to sit sanctimoniously on the fence, disapproving, but secretly relieved? I devoutly hope the first. Germany must not re-arm; even if the French had to invade it once every five years, that would be better than the alternative."
And in 1937: “We have not kept agreements we made; we have made agreements we should not; we have tried to cheat our way to security, and now the security proves a cheat. We have forgotten the wisdom which says that since we cannot foresee where any road will lead in the end, we should stick to the straight and honest one.” He argued that a hatred of war “can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ‘peace’ where there is none.” Despite the prevailing pacifism of the time, such sentiments struck a chord. “This is the voice of the England I love,” wrote a correspondent from Prague in 1938, “and for whose soul I was trembling when I heard about the welcome given Mr Chamberlain on his return from Munich.” As well as the letters there were articles, satires, books, public speaking, fund-raising, petitions, meetings with émigrés and help for refugees. As a leading anti-fascist campaigner in the thirties, Lucas was placed by the Nazis on their Special Search List G.B.
The Black Book
The Black Book was the post-war name given to the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. , the list of prominent British to be arrested in the case of a successful invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany in World War II.-Background:The list was similar to earlier lists prepared by SS like the Special Prosecution...
of Britons to be arrested and liquidated.
A brilliant linguist with infantry and Intelligence Corps experience from 1914–18, proven anti-fascist credentials and a scepticism about the Soviet Union, Lucas was one of the first academics recruited by the Foreign Office – on 3rd September 1939 – to Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
. He was one of the original three members of Hut 3 and remained a central figure there, working on the Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
decodes as a translator and intelligence-analyst. The high standards of accuracy and clarity that prevailed in Hut 3, his chief maintained, were "largely due to his being such a stickler" for them. Lucas was awarded the O.B.E in 1946 for his wartime work.
Biographical
F. L. ("Peter") Lucas grew up in BlackheathBlackheath, London
Blackheath is a district of South London, England. It is named from the large open public grassland which separates it from Greenwich to the north and Lewisham to the west...
and was educated at Colfe's and at Rugby
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
, where he was tutored by the Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
scholar Robert Whitelaw. A prize-winning Classics scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
from 1913, Lucas was elected Apostle
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar....
in January 1914 and came under the influence of G. E. Moore. He volunteered in October 1914, and from 1915-18 served with the Royal West Kent Regiment in France, returning to the front twice after spending seventeen months in hospitals recovering from gas and shell wounds. In the last months of war he was in the Intelligence Corps, examining German prisoners. Elected to a Fellowship at King's College in 1920, he began his career as a Classics lecturer, switching in 1922 to the newly-formed Cambridge University English faculty, of which he was a member from 1922–1939 and from 1945–1962. His move from Classics to English and his edition of John Webster were inspired in part by the seminal 1920 Marlowe Society
Marlowe Society
The Marlowe Society is a Cambridge University theatre club for Cambridge students. It is dedicated to achieving a high standard of student drama in Cambridge...
production of The White Devil
The White Devil
The White Devil is a revenge tragedy from 1612 by English playwright John Webster . A notorious failure when it premiered, Webster complained the play was acted in the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience. The play's complexity, sophistication and satire made it a poor fit with the...
, but his loyalties lay from first to last with Comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
. His students at King's included George Rylands, John Hayward
John Davy Hayward
John Davy Hayward was an English editor, critic, anthologist and bibliophile.-Early life:Hayward was educated at Gresham's School and in France before going up to King's College, Cambridge in 1923 to read English and modern languages...
, F. E. Halliday
F. E. Halliday
Frank Ernest Halliday was a twentieth-century English academic and author. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, though he was best known for his books on William Shakespeare....
, Alan Clutton-Brock, Julian Bell
Julian Bell
Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell . The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother, and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett is his half-sister...
, Desmond Flower and Christopher Burstall. From 1921 to 1929 he was married to the novelist E. B. C. Jones, niece of Robbie Ross; she based the character Hugh Sexton in The Singing Captives (1922) on Lucas. Through her and the Apostles he was associated with the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
, Virginia Woolf describing him to Ottoline Morrell as "pure Cambridge: clean as a breadknife, and as sharp". To Lucas, interviewed in 1958, Bloomsbury seemed "a jungle":
- "The society of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, Clive and Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey was far from being in the ordinary sense a happy family. They were intensely and rudely critical of each other. They were the sort of people who would read letters addressed to others. They tormented each other with endless love affairs. In real crises they could be generous, but in ordinary affairs of life they were anything but kind ... DickinsonGoldsworthy Lowes DickinsonGoldsworthy Lowes Dickinson , was a British historian and political activist. He led most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group.A noted pacifist, Dickinson protested against Britain's...
and Forster were not really Bloomsbury. They were soft-hearted and kind. Bloomsbury was certainly not that."
Lucas's travel writings, accounts of long walks through wild landscapes with literary associations (Greece, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, France), date from the years of his second marriage, 1932-1939, to the artist Prudence Wilkinson, who shared this interest and who also designed the costumes and sets for some of his plays, including the first production of his Icelandic tragedy The Lovers of Gudrun
Laxdœla saga
Laxdæla saga ; also Laxdœla saga, Laxdoela saga, Laxdaela saga, or The Saga of the People of Laxárdalr) is one of the Icelanders' sagas. Written in the 13th century, it tells of people in the Breiðafjörður area of Iceland from the late 9th century to the early 11th century...
. The emphasis on psychology in his post-war books – Literature and Psychology, The Search for Good Sense, The Art of Living, the essay on 'Happiness' in The Greatest Problem – reflects an interest shared with his third wife, the Swedish psychologist Elna Kallenberg, whom he married in 1940.
Works
- Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 1922 http://www.archive.org/stream/senecaelizabetha00lucauoft#page/n3/mode/2up ; paperback, 2009) - Euripides and his Influence (1923)
- Euripides: Medea, partly in the original and partly in translation; with introduction and notes (Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1923) - Euripides: Medea; verse translation, with introduction and notes (Oxford, 1924)
- Ferenc BékássyFerenc BékássyFerenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy was a Hungarian poet killed in World War I.He was born in the family mansion at Zsennye in Vas County, western Hungary. He and his five siblings were sent to Bedales School for a progressive English education.After six years at Bedales, he entered King’s College,...
: 'Adriatica' and other poems; selection with preface (Hogarth PressHogarth PressThe Hogarth Press was founded in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond, in which they began hand-printing books....
, 1925) - Authors Dead and Living; reviews and essays from the New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
(1926 http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=AoAIlk10wygC&oi=fnd&pg=PA6&dq=%22F.+L.+Lucas%22&ots=wlMYUs9yID&sig=ZiB3qN-gBQoczBqvYJC9jD5Qz20#v=onepage&q=%22F.%20L.%20Lucas%22&f=false ; essay on Housman reprinted in the Critical Heritage series, ed. Philip Gardner, 1992) - The River Flows; novel (Hogarth Press, 1926)
- The Complete Works of John Webster; edition in four volumes (1927; 1966)
- Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics (Hogarth Press, 1927)
- Time and Memory; poems and verse translations (Hogarth Press, 1929)
- Cécile; novel (Chatto & Windus, 1930; C & W Centaur Library, 1931)
- Marionettes; poems (Cambridge, 1930)
- Eight Victorian Poets; essays (Cambridge, 1930)
- The Art of Dying - an anthology of last words; selected with Francis Birrell; preface by Lucas (Hogarth Press, 1930)
- The Wild Tulip; novella (1932)
- Ariadne; epic poem, in four books (Cambridge, 1932)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson - an anthology; with introduction (Cambridge, 1932) http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=r0k8AAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=%22F.+L.+Lucas%22&ots=J7kvuMrHkp&sig=UOh5WN9r05AudzOhO6hXh0LVtg4#v=onepage&q=%22F.%20L.%20Lucas%22&f=false
- Thomas Lovell Beddoes - an anthology; with introduction (Cambridge, 1932)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti - an anthology; with introduction (Cambridge, 1933)
- George Crabbe - an anthology; with introduction (Cambridge, 1933)
- The Bear Dances: A Play in Three Acts (with introduction: 'The Gospel According to Saint Marx') (1933)
- The Criticism of Poetry; essay [The Warton Lecture on English Poetry, 1933; Proceedings of the British AcademyProceedings of the British AcademyThe Proceedings of the British Academy is a peer-reviewed academic journal. The publication consists of conference proceedings and lectures, and several of the individual volumes have their own unique titles. Articles from volume 51 onwards are available as PDF files for members, with the first...
, Vol.19.] (O.U.P.Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
London, 1933) - Studies French and English; essays (1934) http://ia600401.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=1/items/StudiesFrenchAndEnglish/StudiesFrenchAndEnglish.djvu ; revised edition (1950; essay on RonsardPierre de RonsardPierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
reprinted in The Cassell Miscellany, London, 1958) - From Olympus to the Styx; Greek travelogue, written with Prudence Lucas (1934)
- Marie MauronCharles MauronCharles Mauron was a French translator of contemporary English authors, including E. M. Forster, and literary critic making use of Psychoanalytic literary criticism. He is noted for his books Aesthetics and Psychology and Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe personnel...
: Mount Peacock, or Progress in Provence; translation, with introduction (Cambridge, 1934) - Poems, 1935; poems and verse translations, with preface (Cambridge, 1935)
- Four Plays: 'Land's End'; 'Surrender to Discretion'; 'The Lovers of Gudrun'Laxdœla sagaLaxdæla saga ; also Laxdœla saga, Laxdoela saga, Laxdaela saga, or The Saga of the People of Laxárdalr) is one of the Icelanders' sagas. Written in the 13th century, it tells of people in the Breiðafjörður area of Iceland from the late 9th century to the early 11th century...
; 'Death of a Ghost' (Cambridge, 1935) - The Awakening of Balthazar; poem for the Abyssinian Red Cross Fund (1935)
- The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal; literary criticism, with an Iceland travelogue (Cambridge, 1936 http://ia600402.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=15/items/TheEclineAndFallOfTheRomanticIdeal/TheEclineAndFallOfTheRomanticIdeal.djvu ; in paperback, 2006)
- The Golden Cockerel Greek Anthology; originals and verse translations, with introduction and notes (Golden Cockerel PressGolden Cockerel PressGolden Cockerel Press was a major English private press operating between 1920 and 1961.The Press was founded by Harold Midgley Taylor in 1920 and was first in Waltham St Lawrence in Berkshire where he had unsuccessfully tried fruit farming...
, 1937) - The Woman Clothed with the Sun, and Other Stories; short stories (1937)
- The Delights of Dictatorship; history and politics (1938)
- Doctor Dido; novel (1938)
- A Greek Garland; a Selection from the Palatine Anthology; originals and verse translations, with introduction and notes [enlarged version of 1937 volume] (Oxford, 1939)
- Journal Under the Terror, 1938; diary (1939)
- The Vigil of Venus; the original and a verse translation, with introduction and notes; with engravings by John Buckland WrightJohn Buckland WrightJohn Buckland Wright was an illustrator and engraver from Dunedin, New Zealand.-External links:** — University of Otago Library-References:* A check-list of the book illustrations of John Buckland Wright by Anthony Reid,...
(Golden Cockerel Press, 1939) - Messene Redeemed; a verse drama (Oxford, 1940)
- Ten Victorian Poets; essays (Cambridge, 1940; essay on Hardy reprinted in the Macmillan Casebook series, editors Gibson & Johnson, 1979)
- Critical Thoughts in Critical Days; essay (1942)
- Tennyson, Poetry and Prose; an anthology, with introduction and notes (Oxford, 1947)
- The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite; the original and a verse translation, with introduction and notes (Golden Cockerel Press, 1948)
- Aphrodite - two verse translations: the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and the Pervigilium Veneris; with the originals; brings together 1939 and 1948 volumes (Cambridge, 1948)
- Gilgamesh, King of Erech; poem in free verse, re-telling the Sumerian epic (Golden Cockerel Press, 1948) http://www.rozhulse.com/acatalog/books_92108_gilgamesh.htm
- Homer: The Odyssey; verse translation in selection, with introduction and notes; engravings by John Buckland Wright (Folio SocietyFolio SocietyThe Folio Society is a book club based in London that produces new editions of classic books. Their books are notable for their high quality bindings and original illustrations...
, 1948) - Musaeus: Hero and Leander; verse translation, with introduction; with engravings by John Buckland Wright (Golden Cockerel Press, 1949)
- Homer: The Iliad; verse translation in selection, with introduction and notes; engravings by John Buckland Wright (Folio Society, 1950)
- Literature and Psychology; literary criticism based on the case-notes of Wilhelm StekelWilhelm StekelWilhelm Stekel was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil." According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel may be accorded the honour, together with Freud, of having founded the first...
(1951) - Greek Poetry for Everyman; verse translations, with introductions and notes (1951)
- From Many Times and Lands; poems of legend and history (1953)
- Greek Drama for Everyman; verse translations, with introductions and notes (1954)
- Style (1955; in paperback with footnote translations: Collier Books, 1962, Pan Books, 1964)
- Tragedy: Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics; revised version of 1927 volume (1957; in paperback with footnote translations: Collier Books, 1962)
- Tennyson; essay [British Council 'Writers and their Works' series] (1957) p.7
- Webster: The White Devil; revised edition (1958)
- Webster: The Duchess of Malfi; revised edition (1958)
- The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell, Goldsmith (1958)
- The Art of Living: Four Eighteenth-Century Minds: Hume, Horace Walpole, Burke, Benjamin Franklin (1959)
- The Greatest Problem, and Other Essays; an essay on world overpopulationOverpopulationOverpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
, literary essays and autobiographical pieces (1960) - The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg; literary criticism (1962)
- August Strindberg: Inferno; translation by Mary Sandbach, introduction by Lucas (1962)
- The Drama of Chekhov, Synge, Yeats and Pirandello; literary criticism (1963)
- Greek Poetry; verse translations; revised and renamed version of 1951 volume, without the passages from Homer (Everyman Library, 1966)
- Greek Drama for the Common Reader; verse translations, revised and renamed version of 1954 volume (1967)
- Greek Tragedy and Comedy; verse translations, renamed version of 1954 volume (1968)
- The English Agent: A Tale of The Peninsular War; novel (1969)
Other writings
- ’The Boar’; short story (AthenaeumAthenaeum (magazine)The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
), 10 September 1920) - ’The Fortune of Carthage’; short story on the Battle of the MetaurusBattle of the MetaurusThe Battle of the Metaurus was a pivotal battle in the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, fought in 207 BC near the Metauro River in present-day Italy. The battle gets a chapter in the classic The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy...
(Athenaeum, 28 January 1921) - ’The Brown Bag’; short story (Cambridge Review, 6 May 1921)
- ’The Battlefield of Pharsalos’; report on a field study (Annual of the British School at AthensBritish School at AthensThe British School at Athens is one of the 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes in Athens, Greece.-General information:The School was founded in 1886 as the fourth such institution in Greece...
, No. XXIV, 1919–21) http://www.jstor.org/stable/30102514?seq=1 - ’The Reverse of Aristotle’; a discussion of PeripeteiaPeripeteiaPeripeteia is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature. The English form of peripeteia is peripety. Peripety is a sudden reversal dependent on intellect and logic...
(Classical Review, August–September 1922) http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3665312 - ’The Waste Land’; a review (New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, 3 November 1923; reprinted in the Macmillan Casebook series and the Critical Heritage series) - ’The Duchess of Malfi’; essay (New Statesman, 1 March 1924)
- ’Playing the Devil’; theatre-review of The White Devil (New Statesman, 17 October 1925)
- ’English Literature’; essay on English at Cambridge (University Studies, Cambridge 1933; editor Harold Wright)
- ’Poetry Examined by Professor Housman’; review of Housman’s Name and Nature of Poetry (Cambridge Review, 8 June 1933)
- ’Mithridates - The Poetry of A.E. Housman’; essay (Cambridge Review, 15 May 1936; reprinted in the Critical Heritage series, ed. Philip Gardner, 1992)
- ’Julian Bell’; a memoir (Cambridge Review, 15 October 1937; reprinted in The Cambridge Mind, editors Homberger, Janeway & Shama, 1970)
- ’Proud Motherhood (Madrid A.D. 1937)’; poem (Poems for Spain, 1939; editors Spender & Lehmann; reprinted in The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse)
- ’William Wordsworth’; essay (Fifteen Poets, an anthology, Oxford University Press, 1941) http://www.ipcvision.com/page02/fllucas01.htm
- History of Hut 3, Public Records Office documents, ref. HW3/119 and /120
- ’Poetry’; ‘Epic’; ‘Ode’; ‘Elegy’; ‘Lyric’; ‘Pastoral’; articles in Chambers's EncyclopaediaChambers's EncyclopaediaChambers's Encyclopaedia was founded in 1860 by W. & R. Chambers. It has no relationship with the Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences of Ephraim Chambers in the 18th century, except that the latter shared the same name as the publisher of this.-History:The first...
, 1950–66 - ’Long Lives the Emperor’; essay on The Hundred Days, The Historical Journal, Vol.8, No.1, Cambridge, 1965 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3020309
- ’On the Fascination of Style’; essay (Holiday, March 1960; reprinted in The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Style, 1968)
Political letters
- 'Germany, Europe and Peace' (Week-end Review, 16 September 1933)
- 'Germany and Europe' (Week-end Review, 21 October 1933)
- 'Abyssinia : Our Duty' (Daily Telegraph, 25 July 1935)
- 'Italy and Abyssinia' (Daily Telegraph, 31 July 1935)
- 'Italy’s Claims' (Daily Telegraph, 7 August 1935)
- 'An Italian Teacher’s Political Views' (Manchester Guardian, 9 August 1935)
- 'Impartiality at Cambridge' (Manchester Guardian, 14 August 1935)
- 'Home-truths from Italy' (New Statesman and NationNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, 24 August 1935) - 'Reply to an Italian’s defence' (Morning PostMorning PostThe Morning Post, as the paper was named on its masthead, was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.- History :...
, 12 October 1935) - 'Mussolini’s War' (Manchester Guardian, 14 October 1935)
- 'Mr. Bernard Shaw’s Letter' (The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, 24 October 1935) - 'The Italians in Tripoli' (Manchester Guardian, 11 January 1936)
- 'Congratulations to the University of Heidelberg' (Cambridge Review, 14 February 1936)
- 'The League’s Abyssinian Front' (Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1936)
- 'British Policy in World Crises' (Manchester Guardian, 22 September 1936)
- 'Democracy and Progress' (Time and TideTime and Tide (magazine)Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Margaret, Lady Rhondda in 1920. It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner...
, 10 October 1936) - 'Blackshirt Marches and Meetings' (Manchester Guardian, 23 October 1936)
- ' “Non-Intervention in Spain” ' (Manchester Guardian, 16 February 1937)
- 'Barbarities of Modern War' (Manchester Guardian, 14 May 1937)
- 'The National Government’s Foreign Policy' (Manchester Guardian, 6 September 1937)
- 'Pacifism and Panic-Mongering' (Manchester Guardian, 1 December 1937)
- 'Pacifism and Air-Raid Precautions' (Manchester Guardian, 7 December 1937)
- 'The Absolute Pacifist Position' (Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1937)
- 'Mr. Chamberlain’s “Realistic” Policy' (Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1938)
- 'To the Editor of The Times ' (Journal Under the Terror, 17 March 1938)
- 'An Open Letter to Lord Halifax' (Journal Under the Terror, 12 May 1938)
- 'Labour and the Popular Front' (New Statesman and Nation, 14 May 1938)
- 'Air Defence' (Daily Telegraph, 16 May 1938)
- 'Britain and Political Refugees' (Manchester Guardian, 20 May 1938)
- 'Refugee Jews and England' (Manchester Guardian, 26 August 1938)
- 'The European Crisis' (Manchester Guardian, 15 September 1938)
- 'The Munich Agreement–and after' (Manchester Guardian, 4 October 1938)
- 'The Refugees in Czechoslovakia' (Manchester Guardian, 3 November 1938)
- 'The Two Voices' (Manchester Guardian, 7 November 1938)
- 'After Barcelona' (Manchester Guardian, 7 February 1939)
- 'Germany and World Empire' (Manchester Guardian, 10 February 1939)
- 'Hitler as “The Friend of Peace” ' (Manchester Guardian, 24 February 1939)
- 'Friendship with Germany' (Manchester Guardian, 8 March 1939)
- 'German Opinion about England' (Manchester Guardian, 15 August 1939)
External links
- Frank Laurence Lucas, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34623
- F. L. Lucas papers, Janus, Cambridge http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=CV%2FPers%2FLucas%2C%20Frank%20Laurence%20(1894-1967)%20author%20and%20scholar http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?val_0=F+L+Lucas&cls_0=*&opn_1=AND&val_1=&cls_1=*&lineage=&after=&before=&submit=Search http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?val_0=FL+Lucas&cls_0=*&opn_1=AND&val_1=&cls_1=*&lineage=&after=&before=&submit=Search http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?val_0=%27Peter%27+Lucas&cls_0=*&opn_1=AND&val_1=&cls_1=*&lineage=&after=&before=&submit=Search
Adaptations
- Gerald FinziGerald FinziGerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres...
set to music Lucas's poem ‘June on Castle Hill’ (1935) in his collection To a Poet, op.13a no.5 - Margaret Wood's play A Kind of Justice (1966) is based on Lucas's poem ‘Spain 1809’ (1953)