'Being aware of life'

 

“We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
― Cecil Day-Lewis

 

Day-Lewis, born in Ireland in 1904 was a poet, mystery writer, and lecturer at three of the world’s leading universities – Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard.   From 1966 to1972, the year of his death, he was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.  In addition to his myriad poems, he wrote 27 novels and 3 collections of essays as well as 5 short stories and his autobiography The Buried Day.

 

Work in writing and the arts has been carried on through his children.  His son Daniel is a multi-Academy Award winning actor; daughter Tamasin a distinguished film producer, food writer and journalist; and son Sean, who died in 2022, was a noted television critic and writer.  

 

Cecil's "best advice" to his children was: “Be aware of life.”  Daniel said that in preparing for a acting roles, he thinks: “Life comes first. What I see in the characters, I first try to see in life.”