JH Prynne obituary: A formidable scholar and literary critic remembered

JH Prynne, known for his opaque poetry, was a warm and rigorous teacher at Cambridge, as recalled by a former student in this letter.

Capital Post 21/07/2026 18:24

JH Prynne obituary: A formidable scholar and literary critic remembered — JH Prynne obituary: Scholar and critic remembered

Letters: JH Prynne obituary

The notoriously “opaque, hermetic, impenetrable [and] forbidding” poetry of Jeremy Prynne might lead one to assume that his character was similarly austere. Yet nothing could be further from the truth, as I discovered during my first term studying English literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in autumn 1979.

A transformative tutorial experience

Sitting in his book-lined study, as he rigorously dissected Sir Walter Raleigh’s As You Came from the Holy Land, was an experience I shall never forget. Verse by verse, then line by line, and word by word, he unravelled the hidden meanings within this deceptively simple poem.

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By the end of our session on Shakespeare’s notoriously ambiguous Sonnet 94: “They that have power to hurt and will do none”, I felt as if my mind had been given a complete makeover.