Tony Harrison: 2015

Tony Harrison was born in 1937 in Leeds and lived much of his life in Newcastle upon Tyne. Harrison’s poetry collections included The Loiners, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; v., which became a cause célèbre when broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and was broadcast again in full on BBC Radio 4 in 2013; and The Gaze of the Gorgon, which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry. He wrote extensively for film, theatre and opera, producing work for the National Theatre, The Metropolitan Opera, the RSC, the BBC and Channel 4. He was awarded the inaugural PEN Pinter Prize in 2009 and the European Prize for Literature in 2011. Tony Harrison passed away in 2025.