It's no go the merry-go-round? Count me in. Think of all those boys together at Oxford in the Twenties: Auden, Isherwood, Spender, MacNeice. Tolkien never taught a more talented bunch of kids! Read Derek Mahon's At the Grave of Louis MacNeice, and weep for them. In the dining room of Christ Church, far from all the majestic portraits of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, right next to the kitchen door, is a tiny oil of young Auden. That's where the dons sat little me. The dover sole and the sauvignon blanc were excellent. It meant the world to me to read Beowulf for that college.
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