Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, Hill was eight years old when he witnessed the Nazis destroying Coventry. A deep engagement with European history, and especially with entwining that history with autobiography, is a hallmark of his work. Hill’s poetry engages both the civil and spiritual life in a manner that has been described variously as scholarly, highly allusive, political, inventive, and Yeatsian. Hill was a university professor from the age of 22 to the age of 74, teaching at several universities in England and at Boston University in the U.S., where he cofounded the Editorial Institute.