Henry Disney is a distinguished scientist (who has worked in tropical rainforests, the Yorkshire Pennines and Cambridge University). While employing regular metre and rhyme he is a thoroughly modern poet of deep insight and compassion combined with acute observation and a critical mind. These highly readable poems repay reading again and again.
Poems "from a beautiful mind, and also a tough mind"
Kitty Ferguson's review, on Amazon, of his 2009 collection
Once again Henry Disney offers the reader a collection ranging across some childhood memories, youthful military service in Cyprus, his varied experience as a scientist of repute (in Belize, Cameroon, Yorkshire and Cambridge), reflections on people and situations, political comment, his love for his late wife, delight in his family, his enjoyment of nature, and much else; all viewed within the context of his hard headed Christian faith that is more concerned with how we respond to situations and people encountered than with dogma. Compassion, psychological insight and humour are essential ingredients of diverse poems that repay reading again and again.
Henry Disney was born in Dorset in 1938. From the age of 3-7 the War resulted in himself and two sisters being separated from their parents, who were stuck in the Sudan. On leaving school in 1957 he did his National Service in the Royal Artillery, becoming a bombardier on active service in Cyprus before becoming a subaltern on Salisbury Plain. He then read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University (with a part I in zoology, botany and geology and a part II in zoology). He was then Assistant Warden of the Flatford Mill Field Centre in Suffolk, mainly teaching field zoology. On marrying the Centre’s secretary, Audrey, they were obliged to leave for a lack of married accommodation. He [...]
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