[1] He served in the British Army in World War I, having joined the Artists' Rifles in 1916, before being commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment in October 1917.
In spite of this he worked his way along the western bank of the canal, and brought back most valuable information, which enabled his company to form a bridgehead.
Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers: Anthony Bertram, Edmund Blunden, Vivian de Sola Pinto, A. E. Coppard, Louis Golding, Robert Graves, L. P. Hartley and Alan Porter.
He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934,[10] and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the Spanish Civil War; while still writing poetry.
He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Ralph Winston Fox, Julius Lipton, A. L. Morton, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Alick West.
[13][14] Left Review existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK.
[18] The post-war clique around Our Time, the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included Christopher Hill, Charles Hobday, Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, Montagu Slater, Swingler, E. P. Thompson; and Doris Lessing joined it.