Birth and boyhood
Bowra was born in Jiujiang, China, to English parents. His father, Cecil Arthur Verner Bowra (1869–1947), who worked for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, had been born in

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By 1916 Bowra's father was Chief Secretary of the Chinese Customs and resided in Beijing in a household with thirty servants. In January that year Bowra's mother came to England to visit her sons, who were both about to see active service in the Army. In May Bowra

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In 1919 Bowra took up a scholarship he had won to New College, Oxford. He took a first class in Honour Moderations in 1920 and a first class, with formal congratulations, in

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In 1922 Bowra was elected a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, with the support of the Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray, and appointed Dean of Wadham shortly afterwards. When

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Bowra had learned the value of verse during the First World War. Cyril Connolly wrote that Bowra "saw human life as a tragedy in which great poets were the heroes who fought back and tried to give life a meaning". Bowra was an important champion of

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Bowra was homosexual. As an undergraduate in Oxford in the 1920s, Bowra was known to cruise for sex. He used the term "the Homintern" and privately referred to his leading position in it, also calling it "the Immoral Front" or "the 69th International".

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Bowra retired in 1970, but continued to live in rooms in the college that had been granted to him in exchange for a house he owned. He became an honorary fellow of Wadham and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. He died of a sudden heart attack in

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