The Irish poet Louis MacNeice (1907-1964) claimed himself to be not a theorist but a poetic empiricist. His unfinished autobiography was posthumously published as The Strings Are False.

Louis MacNeice was born on September 12, 1907, in Belfast, Ireland. Educated at Merton College, Oxford, he taught Greek for a short time in London, lectured in classics at Birmingham University from 1930 to 1936, and lectured in Greek at Bedford College for women from 1936 to 1939. During the first year of World War II (1939) he was a lecturer at Cornell University in the United States.

MacNeice returned to London in 1940. In 1941 he joined the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) as a staff script writer and producer to illustrate Britain's war effort. He continued in these capacities, with the exception of an 18-month hiatus during 1950-1951 when he served as director of the British Institute in Athens; his knowledge of Greek language and culture served him...