Robert ConquestThe late Robert Conquest was born in Malvern, Worcestershire, in 1917, to an American father and his English wife. Educated at Winchester College, the University of Grenoble, and Magdalen College, Oxford, he took his B.A. and (later) M.A. degrees in olitics, philosophy, and economics, and his D. Litt. in Soviet history.

Conquest's poems were published in various periodicals from 1937. In 1945 the PEN Brazil Prize for a war poem was awarded to his For the Death of a Poet and in 1951 he received a Festival of Britain verse prize. After that, he brought out seven volumes of poetry previous to BLOKELORE & BLOKESONGS, and one of literary criticism (The Abomination of Moab). He published a verse translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's epic Prussian Nights (1977), and two novels, A World of Difference (1955), and (with Kingsley Amis) The Egyptologists (1965). In 1955 and 1963 Conquest edited the influential New Lines anthologies, and in 1962- 1963 he was literary editor of the London Spectator.

He was the author of twenty-one books on Soviet history, political philosophy, and international affairs, the most recent being The Dragons of Expectation (2004). His classic, The Great Terror, has appeared in most European languages, as well as in Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish. He died in 2015, aged 98. Read More Read Less