Keith Bosley
British writer, translator, folklorist
Keith Anthony Bosley (16 September 1937 – 24 June 2018) was a British poet, translator, and radio broadcaster. Born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, he studied French at university before starting his career at the BBC, where he worked primarily as a newsreader. Although he published three volumes of original poetry, Bosley is best known for his work as a translator. A polyglot, he claimed to have translated poetry to English from up to forty languages, and had published collections translated from Finnish, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Polish, Russian, and German.
Career
Keith Anthony Bosley was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire on 16 September 1937. His father was a signalman, and worked on nearby rail-lines. Growing up and beginning school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, he later attended Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow. From 1956, Bosley studied French at the University of Reading under Michael Hamburger, continuing at Sorbonne University and the University of Caen Normandy; he graduated in 1960.
Finishing university, Bosley started work with the BBC in 1961, as an announcer and newsreader for the World Service at Bush House. There, he wrote many scripts, some comprising series on poetry and literature to be read himself, and also delivered announcements to open and close programmes including "From Our Own Correspondent".
The public source identifies “Keith Bosley” as british writer, translator, folklorist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Keith, Bosley and British.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6384084. VIAF identifies the subject as 12345633. The Library of Congress control number is n50045242. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937, 2018, 1956 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keith Bosley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.