Derek Stanford FRSL (1918 – 19 December 2008) was a British writer, known as a biographer, essayist and poet. He was educated at Upper Latymer School, Hammersmith, London.
For a period in the early 1950s he worked with Muriel Spark on several books, and was a supporter of hers (together with the poetic eccentric Hugo Manning, a long-term friend), in the Poetry Society. Stanford described Spark's ousting in Inside the Forties. Spark convinced him of the talent of Dylan Thomas, and Stanford wrote an early book on Thomas shortly after his death.
He died in 2008 in Brighton. His widow is the poet Julie Whitby.
Works
A Romantic Miscellany (1946) editor with John Bayliss
The Freedom of Poetry: Studies in Contemporary Verse (1947)
Music for Statues (1948)
Tribute to Wordsworth: A Miscellany of Opinion for the Centenary of the Poet's Death (1950) editor with Muriel Spark