Roy Campbell

John Povey was born in London and educated in England and South Africa. He is at present Professor of English and Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Roy Campbell (1901-1957) was a South African Catholic writer. He converted to Catholicism after witnessing monks being massacred by communist forces during the Spanish Civil war. He was the first poet of note to publish a complete translation of Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal". Campbell served in the British Army during WWII. He made Portugal his home in later life, which is where he died in 1957. Campbell was a close friend of Wyndham Lewis and T.S. Eliot, as well as an associate of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Orwell.