SOURCE: "The Vital Art of Witness," in The Observer, July 23, 1995, p. 16.

[Parker is an English nonfiction writer and biographer. In the following tribute, he remarks on Spender's character.]

In 1974 I arrived at University College London to read English, I had devoured Christopher Isherwood's Berlin books at school and had just seen Cabaret for the third time, and now I could attend commentary and analysis seminars conducted by Stephen Spender. On one occasion we were looking at a poem by WH Auden, and I remember thinking: but this man actually knew Auden; he may even have read the poem in manuscript at the time it was written.

Whether he had or not, Spender (who died last Sunday [July 16]) seemed far more interested in what a group of gauche students had to say about it than in providing his own, privileged insights, and had to be coaxed into a personal...