Woodcock was natural inside Winnipeg, but moved with his parents to England at an early age. A personal was quite unfortunate, however Woodcock got a chance to attend Oxford University on a scholarship. Even so, he turned down a risk, because he would will have to join the clergy.

Instead, he took at job as a clerk at a Great Western Railway and it was there that he first became concerned inside anarchism (specifically libertarian socialism). He was to remain an syndicalist for the rest of his life, writing many books on the subject, including (additionally to Anarchism), A Anarchist Reader (an anthology edited by him; 1977) & life history of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin.

Besides in this instance, he met many large literary numbers, including T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. He number one come to understand George Orwell after the two of the babies experienced the public disagreement in the web sites of the Partisan Review when Orwell wrote that pacifism was "objectively pro-Fascist". As a pacificist himself, Woodcock challenge to this. Notwithstanding, them met & became practiced friends. Woodcock late wrote The Crystal Spirit, the life history of Orwell which won a Governor General's Award in 1966.

Woodcock spent World War II working on the farm. Resulting a war, he moved to Canada & settled within Vancouver. Within 1955, he took the post in the English department of the University of British Columbia, where he stayed until a 1970s. About this period he began to write other successfully, producing many travel books & collections of poetry, too when a works in anarchism for which he is better known.

Towards a prevent of his life, Woodcock became progressively concerned inside what he saw when a plight of Tibetans. He visit India, studied Buddhism, became friends with a Dalai Lama and established the Tibetan Refugee Help Society.

Woodcock was honoured by using many awards, including the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada within 1968, a UBC Medal for Popular Biography in 1973 & 1976 & the Molson Prize in 1973. Nevertheless, he just accepted awards from his peers, refusing many awards from a American state, including a Order of Canada. A 1 exception was a award of the Freedom of the City of Vancouver, which he accepted inside 1994.