Jon Silkin is a poet, a critic, an editor who has worked particularly on the poets of World War I, and the founder and coeditor of Stand, probably the most widely distributed small magazine in the English-speaking world, which for over thirty years has maintained a distinctive social commitment.

He was born in London, the only child of Joseph Silkin and Dora (Doris) Rubinstein Silkin. Joseph Silkin was a lawyer, but his father had been a barrowboy in London's East End, a Jewish refugee from Lithuania, who had to moonlight as a Hebrew teacher and synagogue lavatory cleaner to support his eight children. Joseph's elder brother had worked as a docker before qualifying as a solicitor and founding the family law firm. It is not surprising Joseph was aghast at Jon's intention, announced at the age of fifteen, to become a poet. "There have never been any Jewish...