Thomas Eliel Fenwick Blackburn was born in Cumbria in 1916. Educated at Durham University, he was Gregory Poetry Fellow at Leeds University (1956-8), and head of the English Department at the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea (1960-73). He wrote novels, memoirs, musicals and plays for radio, as well as poetry. He died in 1977. Julia Blackburn, his daughter by his second wife, is a novelist, biographer and journalist.