Al Alvarez

Al Alvarez was born in London 1929.

Alvarez was educated at Oundle School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

He was poetry critic of The Observer from 1956 to 1966 and is a poet and novellist, but some of his most famous works are in the realm of non-fiction: The Savage God: A Study of Suicide; and Biggest Game in Town, about poker players.

He says of his Penguin anthology, The New Poetry: “I had attacked the British poets’ nervous preference for gentility above all else.”

In her study, The Silent Woman – Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm provides an analysis of Alvarez and his relationships with Plath and Hughes.

Alvarez’s recent publications include Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats (2000), his autobiography Where Did It All Go Right? (first published 1999, Bloomsbury paperback 2002), and Feeding the Rat, the story of climbing legend Mo Anthoine.

You can look up Al Alvarez’s poker record on our celeb poker pages. According to the aforementioned, Biggest Game in Town, Al Alvarez plays poker every Tuesday.