Charles Brasch

Charles Orwell Brasch (27 July 1909 – 20 May 1973) was a New Zealand poet, literary editor and arts patron.

He was the founding editor of the literary journal Landfall, and through his 20 years of editing the journal, had a significant impact on the development of a literary and artistic culture in New Zealand.

His poetry continues to be published in anthologies today, and he provided substantial philanthropic support to the arts in New Zealand, including by establishing the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago, by providing financial support to New Zealand writers and artists during his lifetime, and by bequeathing his extensive collection of books and artwork in his will to the Hocken Library and the University of Otago.

Brasch was born in Dunedin in 1910.

He was the first and only son of Helene Fels, a member of the prominent Hallenstein family of clothing merchants through her mother, and her husband Hyam Brasch, a lawyer who later changed his name to Henry Brash.

His younger sister Lesley was born in 1911.

In 1914, when Brasch was aged four, his mother died suddenly during her third pregnancy; he was later to describe this event as the end of his childhood.

He grew up in Dunedin and spent much time at Manono, the house of his mother's father, Willi Fels, who instilled in him a lifelong love of European culture and artworks, and later supported his career in the arts.

By contrast, his relationship with his father was not affectionate, and Brasch was to write in later years: "I had had no father, and he no son."

He was plagued by asthma and bronchitis throughout his childhood, until his teenage years.

In 1923 he was sent as a boarder to Waitaki Boys' High School.

He began writing poetry during his time there and had some success publishing poems in the school magazine.

He also began lifelong friendships with James Bertram, later to become a notable literary figure in his own right, and Ian Milner, the son of the school's principal, Frank Milner.

Brasch's father tried to discourage his interest in poetry, wishing his only son to enter the commercial world, rather than become a scholar, but was unsuccessful.

In 1927 Brasch was sent by his father to St John's College, Oxford, where he gained an "ignominious third" in Modern History (to his father's disappointment).

His contemporaries at Oxford included W. H. Auden and Cecil Day-Lewis, and he had some poetry published in student magazines.

He was unofficially tutored by his mother's cousin Esmond de Beer, who had lived in London since childhood, and who along with his sisters introduced Brasch to a love of fine art that would last the rest of his life.

In the late 1930s he spent time in Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Palestine and Russia, and travelled by rail with Ian Milner east across America.

After Oxford, Brasch returned to Dunedin in 1931, and worked at his mother's family business Hallensteins for most of that year.

During this time he met with Bertram and Milner and helped them plan and prepare a new literary journal, Phoenix, which was to be the first literary journal in New Zealand; although he was never a formal editor, he assisted them with preparing much of the first issue, and contributed work to all but the final issue.

After finding that working in the family firm did not suit him, and after what was described by James Bertram as a "bitter showdown" with his father, he returned to England in 1932.

Brasch's friendship with Colin Roberts led him to an interest in archaeology, and in 1932 he went to Egypt for an expedition led by John Pendlebury at Amarna, in the Nile Valley.

He would return for two further seasons, and between trips lived in London and studied Arabic and Egyptian history at the School of Oriental Studies.

Although he did not pursue an archaeological career, Egypt was to have a lasting influence on his writing.

Brasch also began writing serious poetry during this time, exploring issues of European settlement in New Zealand, which was published in New Zealand journals such as Phoenix and Tomorrow.

Brasch was able to travel widely due to financial support from his maternal grandfather.

On trips back to New Zealand he met influential New Zealand writers including Denis Glover, Ursula Bethell and Leo Bensemann.

In 1936, his sister Lesley became ill and he took her to Little Missenden in the Chiltern Hills, where from early 1937 he taught at an experimental school for "problem children".

Lesley died in early 1939.

In the same year, Brasch had his first collection of poems published by Caxton Press in Christchurch: The Land and the People.

The title poem was the strongest in the collection, and considered the identity of the European coloniser in New Zealand, where "the newcomer heart ... moves gauchely still, half alien".

When World War II broke out, Brasch was travelling to New Zealand with his father after his younger sister's funeral.

He decided to return to England, on the basis that having "enjoyed and loved the best of England", he "must not now refuse the worst".

He registered for military service, but was rejected because of slight emphysemia and was instead employed as a firewatcher until June 1941.

Through his friend Colin Roberts, he obtained a job with the Foreign Office at the intelligence centre at Bletchley Park in June 1941.

Brasch worked in the Italian section in the redbrick Elmers School building; he learnt Romanian and his position was described as Head of Romanian and Italian.

His salary increased over the war from £350 to £450 plus a £60 war bonus.

He later described Bletchley Park as Kafkaesque, with no one willing to make decisions; he and his colleagues could not get an old unsafe stove replaced until it had set the room on fire.

He shared lodgings with Roberts at the nearby village of Soulbury.

During the war, Brasch's writing and poetry matured.