Hamilton

IAN HAMILTON (1938 - 2001)

Born in Norfolk, the son of an Scottish civil engineer, Hamilton moved with his family to Darlington at the age of 12. His father died soon after, and his mother then kept a boarding-house. Hamilton attended the Darlington Grammar School, now the Queen Elizabeth VI Form College, where he felt himself rather superior to the 'rough Northern boys' (the top 15% or so of academic ability!) but learned to speak 'sub-Geordie' and began to show promise as a writer. Barred from playing football by a supposed heart condition which, he said, went away when he began to drink, he was envious of the 'muddy fools' because football was the real poetry for him then and ever afterwards - though whether he stood on the terraces at Feethams is unclear. When in the sixth form, he got into trouble for bringing out a rival to the official school magazine and selling it in person round the doors in Darlington.

Hamilton's English teacher, identified as 'P.J.' [Osborne], was a feared but effective figure, who shaped his writing and propelled him to Oxford after national service in the RAF. Ceaseless literary activity - he admired the patience of Jon Silkin (q.v.) in personally selling copies of Stand - eventually brought him influential posts at the Times Literary Supplement and the Observer. As editor of The Review and its successor, The New Review, Hamilton became a prominent figure on the London literary scene in the 1970s, and he helped to found the London Review of Books in 1979. He was a trenchant critic and reviewer with a powerful dedication to the craft of poetry. 'Sparse' though his own poems were, they constantly strove to combine emotional intensity with a disciplined form. Towards the end of his life, Hamilton saw himself as no longer 'fitting' modern society, and regretted that the fears and forebodings concerning consumerism and mass communications, fears that seemed so remote in the 1950s, had become a bleak reality.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
IAN HAMILTON (1938 - 2001) Born in Norfolk, the son of an Scottish civil engineer, Hamilton moved with his family to Darlington at the age of 12. His father died soon after, and his mother then kept a boarding-house. Hamilton attended the Darlington Grammar School, now the Queen Elizabeth VI Form College, where he felt himself rather superior to the 'rough Northern boys' (the top 15% or so of academic ability!) but learned to speak 'sub-Geordie' and began to show promise as a writer. Barred from playing football by a supposed heart condition which, he said, went away when he began to drink, he was envious of the 'muddy fools' because football was the real poetry for him then and ever afterwards - though whether he stood on the terraces at Feethams is unclear. When in the sixth form, he got into trouble for bringing out a rival to the official school magazine and selling it in person round the doors in Darlington. Hamilton's English teacher, identified as 'P.J.' [Osborne], was a feared but effective figure, who shaped his writing and propelled him to Oxford after national service in the RAF. Ceaseless literary activity - he admired the patience of Jon Silkin (q.v.) in personally selling copies of Stand - eventually brought him influential posts at the Times Literary Supplement and the Observer. As editor of The Review and its successor, The New Review, Hamilton became a prominent figure on the London literary scene in the 1970s, and he helped to found the London Review of Books in 1979. He was a trenchant critic and reviewer with a powerful dedication to the craft of poetry. 'Sparse' though his own poems were, they constantly strove to combine emotional intensity with a disciplined form. Towards the end of his life, Hamilton saw himself as no longer 'fitting' modern society, and regretted that the fears and forebodings concerning consumerism and mass communications, fears that seemed so remote in the 1950s, had become a bleak reality.
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