Brian Stone

Brian Stone wrote his first book, Prisoner from Alamein, which had a foreword by Desmond MacCarthy, in 1944. After the war, during which he was decorated, he entered the teaching profession and taught English in boys' schools for eleven years. He then trained teachers for ten years at Loughborough and Brighton. In 1969 he became a founder member of the Open University, where he was Reader of Literature for the rest of his professional life. Besides a Penguin Critical Study of Chaucer, he has five verse translations to his credit in the Penguin Classics: modern English renderings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Medieval English Verse; The Owl and the Nightingale, Cleanness, St Erkenwald; King Arthur's Death: Alliterative 'Morte Arthure' and Stanzaic 'Le Morte Arthur'; and Chaucer's Love Visions.

Brian Stone died in London in March 1995. In its obituary the Independent described him as 'a brilliant teacher, an enthusiast for good English and an exceptionally brave man. He was unmistakable with his jaunty, determined, one-legged walk and air of buoyant optimism.'