Above all I was charmed in Auden by what to me, when I first read him, seemed the ultimate sophistication, which was not disillusion but instead minimal expectations. More exactly, it was the combination of unillusioned insight, antiromantic and scientifically objective, with the ability to believe in and feel, however mutedly, the traditional positives…. Such poems as "Lay your sleeping head, my love," seemed a fascinating poetry of deflated affirmation, in which the lover expects little of himself or of human nature and sees through romantic love, and yet also sees that it has a kind of reality and value.

In the 1930s an eddy of criticism rose over the political commitment that was thought to run through his writing. In retrospect his attitudes seem much more complex, divided, and ambiguous. He had a horror of dictators, yet voiced the hope for a strong leader or saviour. He...