Radice, William

William Radice was born in 1951 and went to Westminster School. He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, winning the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1970. He went on to do a Diploma in Bengali at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. After working as a psychiatric nurse and a schoolmaster, he returned to Oxford in 1979, researching on the Bengali epic poet Michael Madhusudan Datta for the degree of D.Phil. (1987). In 1991 Penguin published his translation of Tagore’s Selected Short Stories (revised 1994). His other publications include four books of poems, Eight Sections (1974), Strivings (1980), Louring Skies (1985) and The Retreat (1994); a book of children’s stories translated from Bengali, The Stupid Tiger and Other Tales (1981); The Translator’s Art – Essays in Honour of Betty Radice (Penguin, 1987), which he co-edited with Barbara Reynolds; and Teach Yourself Bengali (1994). He has been given literary awards in West Bengal and Bangladesh, and is now Lecturer in Bengali at the School of Oriental and African Studies.