Randall Swingler

His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an industrial background in the Midlands and earlier aristocratic roots in Scotland. His uncle and godfather was Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1903 – 1928) and he was the cousin of the writer Sir Walter Scott. He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford. Swingler served with the British Army in Italy in the Second World War. His egalitarian beliefs led him to refuse a commission and he joined the Royal Corps of Signals as a private soldier, repeatedly refusing offers of a battlefield commission. He saw action in the Italian campaign. In 1945, Corporal Swingler was awarded the Military Medal (MM) "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Italy".

Swingler joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1934. His numerous ventures as a literary entrepreneur included the setting up of Fore Publications (1938), editing the magazines Left Review (from 1937 to 1938), Arena, Seven (taken over in wartime, mainly for the paper stock), Our Time, and the publishing of the Key Books, and later Key Poets series. These proved more influential than his Blake-flavoured verse, which has consistently been criticised (and scarcely defended, except by Andy Croft). In 1952, Swingler wrote a poem titled "The Ballad of Herod Templer" mocking British general Gerald Templer and his attempts to destroy communists during the Malayan Emergency. The poem is believed to have been inspired by the British Malayan headhunting scandal. With his brother, the Labour MP Stephen Swingler, he was involved in Barnett Stross's Lidice Shall Live campaign, and wrote the words to the piece "A Rose For Lidice" (music by Alan Rawsthorne), which was performed at the opening of the memorial rose garden in Lidice in 1955. He left the CPGB in 1956. He was a founder of E. P. Thompson's The New Reasoner (from 1957).

He was married to the concert pianist and tutor at the Guildhall, Geraldine Peppin. They had an open marriage and Swingler had an affair with actor and activist Ann Davies from 1939 to 1941. Swingler died unexpectedly on 19 Jun 1967 at Charing Cross Hospital. Westminster. His daughter Judith married the composer Edward Williams. She died in 2022.

• Crucifixus (1932) play • Difficult Morning (1933) poems • The Left Song Book, (1938) compiled with Alan Bush • The Years of Anger – poems • The God in the Cave (1950) poems • Selected Poems of Randall Swingler (2000) edited by Andy Croft