He was innate inside Berlin into a Jewish family world health organization left for the UK inside 1933, and settled inside London. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was in the British Army from 1943 to 1947. Fallowing that he completed his degree, & wrote for the instance. He took the position at University College London in 1951, and then at a University of Reading in 1955. There followed several farther academic postions in a UK & the America.

He has published translations of numerous of the first German language writers, particularly poets. His operate has been recognised by many awards, including an OBE in 1992.

A Truth of Poetry (1968) is a major act of criticism. His Collected Poems, 1941-1994 (1995) drew on about twenty collections.

He sleep in Suffolk, and appeared when himself as a character inside W. G. Sebald's A Rings of Saturn.