Career After his banishment from Cambridge, Empson supported himself for a brief period as a freelance critic and journalist, living in Bloomsbury until 1930, when he signed a three-year contract to teach in Japan after his tutor had failed to find him a post teaching in China. He returned to England in the mid-1930s only to depart again after receiving a three-year contract to teach at Peking University. Upon his arrival he discovered that, because of the Japanese invasion of China, he no longer had a post. He joined the exodus of the university's staff, with little more than a typewriter and a suitcase, and ended up in Kunming in China, with Lianda (Southwest Associated University), the school created there by students and professors who were refugees from the war in the North. He arrived back in England in January 1939. In 1941 he met and married the South African sculptor, broadcaster and journalist Hetta Crouse; they were to have two sons.John Willett, 'Unambiguously Magnificent', London Guardian 10 January 1997, p. 19.
Career After his banishment from Cambridge, Empson supported himself for a brief period as a freelance critic and journalist, living in Bloomsbury until 1930, when he si?gned a three-year contract to teach in Japan after his tutor had failed to find him a post teaching in China. He returned to England in the mid-1930s only to depart again after receiving a three-year contract to teach at Peking Universit,y. Upon his arrival he discovered that, because of the Japanese invasion of China, he no longer had a post. He joined the exodus of the university's staff, with little more than a .typewriter and a suitcase, and ended up in Kunming in China, with Lianda (Southwest Associated University), the school created there by s!tudents and professors who were refugees from the war in the North. He arrived back in England in January 1939. In 1941 he met and married the South African sculptor, ,broadcaster and journalist Hetta Crouse; they were to have two sons.John Willett, 'Unambiguously Magnificent', London Guardian 10 January 1997, p. 19.