George Hyde UK

George Hyde was born in Scotland in 1941, son of an Army officer, and read English at Cambridge under the direction of F. R. Leavis, whose work on Tolstoy inspired him to learn Russian. Graduate work at Essex University with Donald Davie, who designed pioneering courses in comparative literature and literary translation, led to a teaching post at the University of East Anglia, where he helped Max Sebald set up the British Centre for Literary Translation. This was followed by a professorship at Kyoto Women's University, Japan, where he introduced comparative literature and culture courses. George Hyde also taught for four years at Polish universities in British Council funded posts during and after the communist period, and developed an interest in Polish theatre. Publications include a study of the Russian heritage of Vladimir Nabokov, two books on D. H. Lawrence, and literary translation from Russian and Polish, as well as numerous essays in the field of Modernism. While in Japan, he published a number of essays on the neglected Norwich writer George Borrow, which will form the basis of a monograph.

His translation (with Larisa Gureyeva) of Vladimir Mayakovsky's Pro Eto - That's What was short-listed for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2010.

In retirement, George Hyde is learning Greek and Japanese and has taken up the saxophone, and spends as much time as possible in his flat in Hania, Crete.

(2010)