Terence Tiller
Terence Rogers Tiller (19 September 1916 – 24 December 1987) was an English poet and radio producer. Early life, poet. Tiller was born in Truro, Cornwall and educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. He studied history at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a starred first-class BA degree in 1937 and won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse. He then lectured in medieval history at Cambridge from 1937 to 1939. But then, just before the war, he accepted an academic position in Cairo, where he remained stranded. For the next six years he taught English  literature at what was then the King Fuad I University. While there he became associated with the Personal Landscape group of poets that also included Keith Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, Robin Fedden and Bernard Spencer. His enigmatic poems about wartime Egypt, showing the influence of Wilfred Owen, gained attention through the publication of his "Poems" in 1941, followed by "The Inward Animal" in 1943. His most acclaimed poetry collection was "Unarm, Eros" (1947), containing poems of "strong formal pattern, heraldic imagery, and striking sensuousness" BBC. In 1946 he joined the BBC Features Department, where he was responsible for hundreds of plays  and feature broadcasts on a wide range of subjects, but mainly on history, literature and mythology. His contemporaries in the department included the fellow poets Rayner Heppenstall, Louis MacNeice and W R Rodgers. During this period, Tiller became a noted Fitzrovian. He collaborated with the composer Elizabeth Poston on features such as "The Shepherds' Play" (1947), "The Death of Adam" (1949), "Lilith" (1950), and "The Holy Child" (1952). In 1955 he was producer of the first BBC radio adaptation of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" (which did not please the author). He adapted and modernized Chaucer's "The  Parlement of Foules" in 1958. In 1964 he moved to the Drama Department. His work on the weekly chess programme on the Third Programme led to his book "Chess Treasury of the Air" in 1966. In 1969 he completed the posthumous story "After Ten Years" by C. S. Lewis for broadcast, and in 1973 he brought Mervyn Peake's "The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb" to the airwaves. Tiller retired from the BBC in 1976, but continued working on some projects. In 1979 he dramatized Vladimir Nabokov's novel "The Defence".