Lazarus Aaronson

Lazarus Aaronson

Lazarus Leonard Aaronson MBE was a British poet and a lecturer in economics. He was part of a group of friends who are today referred to as the Whitechapel Boys. In his twenties, he converted to Christianity and a large part of his poetry focused on his conversion and spiritual identity as a Jew and an Englishman. He died from heart failure and coronary heart disease on 9 December 1966.

About Lazarus Aaronson in brief

Summary Lazarus AaronsonLazarus Leonard Aaronson MBE was a British poet and a lecturer in economics. He was part of a group of friends who are today referred to as the Whitechapel Boys. His poetry is characterised more as ‘post-Georgian’ than modernistic. In his twenties, he converted to Christianity and a large part of his poetry focused on his conversion and spiritual identity as a Jew and an Englishman. He published three collections of poetry: Christ in the Synagogue, Poems, and The Homeward Journey and Other Poems. He died from heart failure and coronary heart disease on 9 December 1966 in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, where he lived with his wife Dorothy Beatrice. He had three children with his first wife, Lydia Sherwood, whom he married three times. He also had a son with Olive Ireson, with whom he had one son, Theodore Komisarjevsky, and the much publicised suit was undefended.

He never completed his degree degree at the London School of Economics, but never finished his public administration degree, either. He is buried at St Paul’s Cemetery, London, with his second wife, Dorothy Beatrix Beatrice, and his third wife, the actress Lydia Lewer, also ended in divorce. His last son, David, was born in 1950, and he died in 2012, at the age of 89. He has been described as ‘the most gifted poet in the world’ by the poet John Keats, and has been compared to the likes of Shaul Tchernichovsky and Zalman Shneur. His work has not been widely publicised, but he left many unpublished poems at his death, which have gained a cult following of dedicated readers. His son Theodore was born on the 24th of December 1894 at 34 Great Pearl Street, Spitalfields, London.