Nicholas Blake
| Cecil Day-Lewis | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
27 April 1904 Ballintubbert, Queen's County, Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 22 May 1972 (aged 68) Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom |
| Resting place | St Michael's Church, Stinsford, Dorset, England, United Kingdom |
| Pen name | Nicholas Blake |
| Occupation | Poet, novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Spouse | Constance Mary King (1928–1951) Jill Balcon (1951–1972) |
| Children | Sean Day-Lewis (b. 1931) Nicholas Day-Lewis (b. 1934) Tamasin Day-Lewis (b. 1953) Daniel Day-Lewis (b. 1957) |
Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis) CBE (27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972) was an Anglo-Irish poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He was the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.
In his autobiography The Buried Day (1960), he wrote "As a writer I do not use the hyphen in my surname – a piece of inverted snobbery which has produced rather mixed results".
Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, Athy/Stradbally border, Queen's County (now known as County Laois), Ireland. He was the son of Frank Day-Lewis (died 29 July 1937),Church of Ireland Rector of that parish, and Kathleen Blake (née Squires; died 1906). Some of his family was from England (Hertfordshire and Canterbury). His father took on the surname "Day-Lewis" as a combination of his own birth father's ("Day") and adoptive father's ("Lewis") surnames. After the death of his mother in 1906, Cecil was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives in County Wexford. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Wadham College, Oxford. In Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of the circle gathered around W. H. Auden and helped him to edit Oxford Poetry 1927. His first collection of poems, Beechen Vigil, appeared in 1925.
In 1928 he married Constance Mary King, the daughter of a Sherborne master (i.e. teacher), and worked as a schoolmaster in three schools, including Larchfield School, Helensburgh, Scotland (now Lomond School). During the 1940s he had a long and troubled love affair with the novelist Rosamond Lehmann. His first marriage was dissolved in 1951, and he married actress Jill Balcon, daughter of Michael Balcon.
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