Jon Silkin was born in London in 1930. After National Service and time as a manual labourer, he went to the University of Leeds as Gregory Fellow in Poetry. He founded Stand magazine in 1952 and the Northern House press in 1965. His publications included nine volumes of poetry and many critical works and anthologies: Out of Battle, his study of Rosenberg, Owen and other poets of the Great War, is a critical landmark. He held writing fellowships and chairs in the United States, Australia and Japan. Jon Silkin died in November 1997.