1. Writer and teacher

‘There’s been a war between science and poetry, and poetry lost’, announced the barefoot, tall, bearded man in the big lecture theatre, to a room full of nervous first- year literature undergraduates. It was one of the first few weeks of lectures at the University of Essex in October 1993, unusually still summery. The man standing by the lectern was Dudley Young, speaking without notes or a script, as was his particular custom. I later learned that he made this a point of honour.

As I mature student, my immediate thought was that he was talking my language. Dudley was already known to be somewhat controversial and unconventional, even for radical Essex. He had come to us via Canada and Cambridge, where he had been accepted for postgraduate study, after announcing that he ‘wanted to lose an argument’, as he told me later. Everyone had an opinion about Dudley Young.

Later that year I applied for his second-year class called ‘Primitive Mythology’, which I managed to join despite a long waiting list. He spent two weeks talking about the first two books of Genesis. So much from so little. He would speak for an hour, then have questions and discussion. I still have my notes. The level was higher than anything else I had experienced. Other classes were complicated and intimidating, but this was air that was exhilarating, talking of Edens, good and evil and original sin.

What strikes me now about his memorable opening words is how uncompromising they were, hinting at his ...