{{Short description|British poet and academic}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}} '''Frank Templeton Prince''' (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the [[Second World War]] in 1942, which has been frequently included in [[anthologies]]. He was born in [[Kimberley, South Africa]]. His father Henry (Harry) Prince (formerly Prinz) was from the East End of London, of [[Dutch-Jewish]] descent, while his mother was Scottish. He was educated at the [[St. Patrick's Christian Brothers' College, Kimberley|Christian Brothers College]] in Kimberley, then [[Balliol College, Oxford]]. He had a visiting position at [[Princeton University]]. In World War II he was involved in intelligence work at [[Bletchley Park]].<ref>{{cite web | publisher=[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]] | title = Preface | date = January 2007 | url = http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/prelims/contents/07a/preface/ }}</ref>
He married in 1943, and took an academic position after the war at the [[University of Southampton]], where he settled. In the mid-1970s, he taught at the [[University of the West Indies]] in [[Jamaica]], as well as [[Brandeis University]] in the United States and [[Sana'a University]], Yemen.
Prince's early work drew praise from [[T.S. Eliot]], who was then editor at [[Faber and Faber]]. Eliot published some of his poetry in [[The Criterion (magazine)|The Criterion]] before publishing Prince's first book ''Poems'' in 1938.<ref name="Independent obituary">{{cite news|title=Professor F. T. Prince|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-f-t-prince-548554.html|accessdate=10 August 2011|newspaper=The Independent|date=8 August 2003|quote=Author of one of the two best-known poems of the Second World War}}{{dead link|date=August 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> In work such as the ''Afterword on Rupert Brooke'' his interest in the metrical ideas of [[Robert Bridges]] is evident.
F. T. Prince died in [[Southampton]] in 2003.
==Works==
*''Poems'' (1938) [[Faber and Faber]] *''The Italian Element in Milton's Verse'' (1951) criticism *''Soldiers Bathing'' (1954) *''The Doors of Stone: Poems, 1938–1962'' (1963) *''Memoirs in Oxford'' (1970) verse autobiography *''Drypoints of the Hasidim'' (1975) *''[[Afterword on Rupert Brooke]]'' (1976) *''A Last Attachment'' (1979) *''Collected Poems'' (1979) *''Later On'' (1983) *''Not A Paris Review Interview'' (1986) *''Walks in Rome'' (1987) verse autobiography *''Collected Poems 1935–1992'' (1993, [[Carcanet Press]]) *''In Keats Country'' (2015, Perdika Press) previously unpublished poems *''Memoirs of Caravaggio'' (2015, Perdika Press) previously unpublished
==References== {{Reflist}} {{Use British English|date=August 2010}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Prince, F.T.}} [[Category:People from Kimberley, South Africa]] [[Category:1912 births]] [[Category:2003 deaths]] [[Category:Princeton University staff]] [[Category:Academics of the University of Southampton]] [[Category:Academic staff of the University of the West Indies]] [[Category:British male poets]] [[Category:20th-century British poets]] [[Category:20th-century British male writers]] [[Category:Alumni of St. Patrick's Christian Brothers' College, Kimberley]]