Read, Sir Herbert 1893-1968
English art historian, critic and poet

Born at Muscoates Grange, near Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, he was educated in Halifax and at Leeds University. He became assistant keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (1922-31), Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh University (1931-33) and editor of the Burlington Magazine (1933-39), and he held academic posts at Cambridge, Liverpool, London and Harvard universities. As an art critic he revived interest in the 19th-century Romantic movement, and championed modern art movements in Great Britain. He was interested in industrial design, and his Art and Industry (1936) was seminal in the development of this new discipline. He was director of the first major British design consultancy, the Design Research Unit. His poetry included Naked Warriors (1919, based on his war experiences) and Collected Poems, published in 1946. His other publications include English Prose Style (1928), The Meaning of Art (1931), Form in Modern Poetry (1932), The Philosophy of Modern Art (1952) and his autobiography, The Contrary Experience (1963).