In Children Leaving Home, a poem written at the end of his life for his two younger offspring, Tamasin and Daniel, the Anglo-Irish Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72) posed the question ‘What shall I have to bequeath?’ His dispirited answer was ‘a sack of genes/I did not choose, some verse/Long out of fashion, a laurel wreath/Wilted…’ Time has proved him wrong. Half a century on from his death on 22nd May 1972, that same sack of genes has seen Daniel become the only three-times winner of the Oscar for Best Actor. ...
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