File EEF4/18 - Cardiff Literature Festival 1989: Dannie Abse talking about Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve

Dannie Abse was born in 1923 in Cardiff, Glamorgan. He studied at the Welsh National School of Medicine, and at King's College and Westminster Hospital in London, qualifying as a doctor in 1943. He entered clinical practice, and was a specialist at the Central Medical Establishment chest clinic, 1954-1989. He is a prolific writer and poet. He is deeply interested by 1930s politics and the Spanish Civil War, which formed the background to his schooldays. His poetry is influenced by his Jewish heritage, Welsh nationality, and his life as a family man and a London suburban dweller. He has published seven volumes of poetry and seven plays. He was Senior Fellow of the Humanities at Princeton University (1973-1974), and president of the Poetry Society (1978-1992). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, Fellow of the Welsh Academy of Letters in 1992 (President since 1995), Honorary Fellow at the University of Wales College of Medicine (1999), and awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Wales (1989) and the University of Glamorgan (1997). He was given a Cholmondeley Award (1985). Abse is married to the art historian Joan Mercer, and together they edited, Voices in the Gallery: Poems and Pictures (1986) and The Music Lover's Literary Companion (1988). They live in Glamorgan.