Includes index.

Charles Hubert Sisson CH (April 22, 1914 – September 5, 2003) was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator. He was also a novelist and critic. He worked as a civil servant, and wrote a standard text The Spirit of British Administration (1959) arising from his work and a comparison with other European methods.

He was born and brought up in Bristol, and was a student at the University of Bristol where he read English and Philosophy. He reacted against the prevailing intellectual climate of the 1930s, particularly the Auden Group, preferring to go back to the anti-romantic T. E. Hulme, and to the Anglican tradition. He joined the Ministry of Labour in 1936. During World War II he served in the British Army in India.

He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1993.



From The Times
September 9, 2003
C. H. Sisson
Poet of austerity and restraint whose work is central to the continuing Christian tradition in English literature
The rise of C. H. Sisson to literary eminence, as a poet, critic, novelist, translator and essayist, took a long time: from 1960, when he was discovered by the editors of the shortlived but influential quarterly X, until 1989, when the publication of his stately, subtle and ironic memoir, On the Look-Out was generally acclaimed.

There had always been some opposition to him, but his achievement, at least within the very austere vein in which he chose to work, could by then no longer be questioned. It is for his sombre poetry, now seen as an essential continuation of the English Christian tradition, that he will be most prized. He and his readers owe a great debt to Carcanet Press, which successfully persisted with his work for 20 years.