Hugh Gordon Porteus was an influential reviewer of art and literature in the London of the 1930s, and also a poet. He was an admirer of Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

 and wrote the first critical book on him, published in 1932. Lewis portrayed Porteus as the character "Rotter" Parkinson in his novel Self Condemned.

Life

He trained as an artist, and had a particular interest in Chinese art. He dressed in an affected way, and sometimes in imitation of Wyndham Lewis, and was considered somewhat eccentric; but he was an engaging and interesting conversationalist. He was also a gossip, and the reason why George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

 attacked Lewis as a Stalinist in Partisan Review

Partisan Review

Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...

: Lewis had joked with Roy Campbell

Roy Campbell (poet)

Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...

 (another gossip) about writing a book on Stalin, Campbell had mentioned this to Porteus, and Porteus told this to Orwell as factual. A Lewis disciple, he was indiscreet about his teacher.

As literary editor of The Twentieth Century, monthly magazine of the Promethean Society in the early 1930s, he boosted the career of George Barker

George Barker (poet)

George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

, about whom he wrote for Scrutiny. The Twentieth Century was published from March 1931 to May 1933, and printed poetry by W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

 and Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts (writer)

Michael Roberts , originally named William Edward Roberts, was an English poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, who made his living as a teacher.-Life:...

. Porteus published a review there of Wyndham Lewis's Hitler (1931), that was "unqualified praise". Lewis gave a public reading of his One Way Song in 1933 in Kensington Gardens

Kensington Gardens

Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. It is shared between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares .The open spaces...

, to an audience of Porteus and a flock of sheep.

He was also a long-time supporter and friend of Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...

, whom he in 1946 compared to James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 and T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

. He wrote in a hostile way about Laura Riding

Laura Riding

Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...

; and he compared John Middleton Murry

John Middleton Murry

John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was prolific, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime...

 in 1933 to "a renegade freelance vicar", in Time and Tide.

He wrote on Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

, Patrick Heron

Patrick Heron

Patrick Heron , was an English painter, writer and designer, based in St. Ives, Cornwall.- Early life :...

 and John Piper

John Piper (artist)

John Egerton Christmas Piper, CH was a 20th-century English painter and printmaker. For much of his life he lived at Fawley Bottom in Buckinghamshire, near Henley-on-Thames.-Life:...

, amongst others. He was included in the Cairo poets

Cairo poets

The British Army presence in Egypt in World War II had, as a side effect, the concentration of a group of Cairo poets. There had in fact been a noticeable literary group in Cairo before the war in North Africa broke out, including university academics. Possibly as a reflection of that, there were...

 World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 group, having been stationed with the RAF on the Suez Canal

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...

 (miserably seasick on the journey out). At the end of the war Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, held prisoner, asked for Porteus to be given the work of checking the ideograms in the Pisan Cantos. Porteus wrote a 1950 essay Ezra Pound and His Chinese Character: A Radical Examination.