Announcing his decision to become a Communist, Spender wrote that "the most important political aim of our time should be the United Front," aligning the communist movements in the Soviet Union, Spain, and France. The same image--a "united front"--informs the description in Journals 1939-1983 of the Freundschaft ideal, in which two men "face the world together."

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Spender divorced in 1939, and two years later married Natasha Litvin, a concert pianist; two children, Matthew and Lizzie, were born in 1945 and 1951. Some critics have concluded that he repudiated his homosexuality when he rejected Tony Hyndman in 1936 and opted for a life as husband and father; others, however, see him as a complex man who resists easy labeling.

Two of Spender's poems selected for inclusion in the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse--"How strangely this sun reminds me of my love!" and "To T.A.R.H. [Tony Hyndman]"--were both printed in Collected Poems 1925-1953, but removed from the latest and final edition of Collected Poems 1925-1985.

It hardly needs to be said that conditions in the 1930s--whether in Berlin, Barcelona, or London--were dangerous for homosexuals. That Spender writes as openly as he does about his relationship with his "German friend" Hellmut, or about his "agonized" concern for Tony's well-being during the Spanish Civil War, whether that concern was motivated by a sense of guilt or responsibility, demonstrates courage that few writers of Spender's generation and reputation can claim.

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