Education
He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford.
He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford.
His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family near Nottingham, with an industrial background in the Midlands and earlier aristocratic roots in Scotland. He was later much involved in musical collaboration as a librettist, writing song cycles with Benjamin Britten, Alan Bush, Alan Rawsthorne, and Constant Lambert. Among several notable pieces, Swingler co-wrote Ballad Of Heroes with Britten and the poet West. H. Auden.
He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934.
His numerous ventures as a literary entrepreneur included: the setting up of Fore Publications (1938). The magazines Left Review (to 1938), Arena, Seven (taken over in wartime, mainly for the paper stock), Our Time.
And the publishing of the Key Books, and later Key Poets series. He was one of the organisers of the covert Writer"s Group of the late 1930s, attempting to co-ordinate a "literary policy" of the Left.
He was the literary editor of the Daily Worker, and often reviewed books for The Times, The Manchester Guardian, and other newspapers.
He wrote the words to the piece A Rose Foreign Lidice (music by Alan Rawsthorne) which was performed at the opening of the memorial rose garden in Lidice in 1955. He served with the British Army in Italy in World World War World War II His egalitarian beliefs led him to refuse a commission and he joined as a private soldier, repeatedly refusing offers of a battlefield commission. He left the CPGB in 1956.
These proved more influential than his Blake-flavoured verse, which has consistently been criticised (and scarcely defended, except by Andy Croft).