Bryan Stanley William Johnson was born in London and spent most of his life there except for some periods during World War II when, together with other London children, he was evacuated to the country and, much later, in 1970, a period during which he served as Gregynog Arts Fellow at the University of Wales. His father was a bookseller's stockkeeper, and his mother had once worked, in the early 1920s, as a servant in Chester Square in Belgravia. After World War II, Johnson finished school, then found work as a clerk in a bank. But in 1955 he went to King's College of London University, graduating in 1959 with an honors B.A. in English. He taught high school and was a sports reporter for a time. In the early 1960s he became an editor of the Transatlantic Review, which then had its chief editorial office in London, and served...