Cecil Day-Lewis

Auden, initially strongly influential, was met at Oxford: Day-Lewis joined the circle around him, later modelling a fictional detective on him. Spender became another friend from the time (though it is a popular misconception that with MacNeice they formed a tight-knit group; the four were never in the same room all at the same time). Shortly before his fatal accident, Lawrence wrote praising his poetry. Day-Lewis’s friend Kavanagh told him he should have made more of his socialist convictions, Lehmann had a long affair with him, and his friend Amis gave him house-room in the months he was dying.