William Radice


William Radice was a British poet, writer and translator. His research area was in Bengali language and literature, and he was the senior lecturer in Bengali in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He translated several Bengali works, and works by Rabindranath Tagore and Michael Madhusudan Dutt.
Radice adapted the text Debotar Grash by Rabindranath Tagore as an opera libretto, which was set to music by Param Vir as Snatched by the Gods. He wrote the libretto for a children's opera Chincha-Chancha Cooroo or The Weaver's Wedding with music by Bernard Hughes.
He published nine volumes of poetry ranging from Eight Sections, Strivings, Louring Skies and Gifts to his latest two books This Theatre Royal and Green, Red, Gold, a novel in 101 sonnets which were hailed by A. N. Wilson in The Daily Telegraph as stunning. He has also fore-worded a collection of translated Tagore poems, Soaring High, written by Mira Rani Devi.
In 2002, he published the voluminous Myths and Legends of India, a collection of 112 of his own retellings with selections from P. Lal's ongoing transcreation of the Mahabharata. Along with the major Hindu myths, he included legends and folk tales from Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Syrian Christian and tribal sources.
His mother was the editor and translator Betty Radice. William Radice died from cancer in England, on 10 November 2024, at the age of 73.

Major publications

William Radice's main publications include:
  • Eight Sections
  • Strivings
  • The Stupid Tiger and Other Tales
  • Louring Skies
  • Selected Poems, 1970–81
  • Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems
  • The Translator's Art: Essays in Honour of Betty Radice
  • Char Baktrita
  • Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories + Cuentos and L'esquelet i altres narracions
  • Sakuntala
  • Snatched by the Gods, a libretto based on Tagore for an opera by Param Vir
  • Rozsa Hajnoczy: Fire of Bengal
  • Juan Mascaró: The Creation of Faith/La Creació de la Fe
  • The Retreat
  • Teach Yourself Bengali
  • Martin Kämpchen: The Honey-seller and Other Stories
  • Before and After
  • Rabindranath Tagore: The Post Office
  • The One and the Many, readings from Tagore with photographs by John Berridge
  • Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism
  • Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems of Rabindranath Tagore
  • Myths and Legends of India
  • Gifts: Poems 1992–1999
  • Sigfrid Gauch: Traces of My Father
  • A Hundred Letters from England
  • Poetry and Community: Lectures and Essays 1991–2001
  • ''Beauty, Be My Brahman: Indian Poems''