The poet David Gascoyne (1916-2001) led a life as surreal as his early poems. At eighteen he drafted the manifesto of the English Surrealist Group and at nineteen he published what remains an authoritative account of the international movement. He translated for Salvador Dali and crossed swords with Andre Breton; the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London was largely his brainchild. During the war he toured as an actor, embraced religious...