He tells the story with a lucid command of narrative and an understated wit.
- Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books
Stanford makes a careful assessment of Day-Lewis's development as a poet through this first part of his life, writing well about Auden's influence and about the ambition to use poetry as both 'an instrument of social change' and a means of bringing 'order to self-consciousness'. He does well, too, in mapping the ways that political interests created problems for his writing as well as driving it forward.
- Andrew Motion, Guardian
Peter Stanford's useful book assembles a vast amount of background detail
- Neil Powell, Times Literary Supplement
This is an intelligent, fair, well-written biography.
- Bevis Hillier, Daily Telegraph
Peter Stanford... has done a great job in assembling various strands of autobiography that fed Day-Lewis's poetic imagination...an important and necessary study.
Irish Times
Catches [Day-Lewis'] charm. Much more importantly it helps the reader to sympathise with and understand his poetry.
- P.J. Kavanagh, Spectator
Readers of Peter Stanford's shrewd and conscientious biography are given every chance to reassess Day Lewis's works.
- Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
It is Stanford's huge accomplishment in this excellent biography that he gives due weight to all aspects of this multifarious man...Stanford suceeds in his aim of returning a neglected figure to public attention, and sheds new light on many key literary and political issues of his age.
- Michael Arditti, Independent
Peter Stanford, an established biographer and writers on religion (one of his books is <i>The Devil: A Biography</i>) has here produced a well-rounded, beautifully written, and thoroughly researched biography. As Day-Lewis was such an overwhelmingly personal poet, Stanford weaves a significant quantity of the poetry into his biography, even providing the occasional element of critical analysis as well. The result is a sympathetic and gripping portrait of a fascinating man and influential poet who, it is to be hoped, will begin to garner the critical attention he most richly deserves...Stanford has performed a marvelous service in helping to recover the life and poetry of an unfairly neglected poet and in the process celebrates a strand of twentieth-century poetry that stands as an alternative to Modernism.
- Kevin J. Gardner, Religion and the Arts
From Standford's sympathetic biography, Day-Lewis emerges as a loveable, charismatic man who wrote some beautiful poems.
- Mavis Campion, www.pensioneronline.com
[This] amiable and authoritative biography by Peter Stanford [results in] this memorable and often moving portrait.
- John Hinton, Catholic Herald
This is an excellent biography, which succeeds in getting the balancing act between a consideration of the writer as a man and as an artist
- Simon Turner, www.toddswift.blogspot.com
Peter Stanford's new biography argues against what the author sees as the current undervaluation of the poet...Behind such stuff is a personal life rich in incident, and Stanford tells its story efficiently, leaving any matters of judgement, good or bad, to the reader.
- Peter McDonald, Literary Review
Stanford likes and respects his subject...and thats what really counts in a biography, along with sympathetic understanding - which he also has. It succeeds in relating the work to the life in an exemplary manner.
- Robert Nye, Tablet, The
Peter Stanford has managed a magnificent balance of public and private personae with the added bonus of shrewd critical appraisal of the poems. It is a rare acheivement in a literary biography.
- Margaret Speak, Yorkshire Post