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1922-1978
Author and linguist. His father was Headmaster of Boys' High School in Oswestry, Shropshire, from 1931 until 1956. Gavin lived with his family at Holly Bank, off Mount Road, from 1931 to 1937 and was educated at Shrewsbury School. He went on to Queen's College, Oxford, where he obtained an honours degree in Modern History. He travelled widely, learning over a dozen languages as he went. He worked for London publishers from 1947 until 1956 when he returned to Shropshire. From 1960 to 1961 he lived at Old Springs Farm, Hales, Staffordshire, and was married to Irene Rosalind Anderson, of Aberdeen, a fellow traveller and linguist, at the nearby church on 27 April 1963. Latterly his home was in Meole Brace, Shrewsbury.
Gavin Gibbons was an author and connected with publishing all his working life. His writing reflected his diverse interests such as railways, travel, history, languages, gardening and astronomy. Whilst editor of the Geographia series of guide books to areas of Great Britain he wrote many of the volumes himself. During the summer of 1968 and 1969 he wrote a series of articles on Shropshire and the surrounding countryside that appeared weekly in The Shropshire Journal. These were collected into Out and about (1970).
His knowledge of some of the smaller towns of Europe proved invaluable to the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica where numerous unsigned entries from him appeared. He is the author of one science fiction novel, By space ship to the Moon (1958).
The following work is available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
By space ship to the Moon (1958)
A selection of other books by the author:-
The coming of the space ships
Meole Brace through the centuries
Out and about; travels in and around Shropshire and the Welsh
Border (1970)
They rode in space ships
Trains under the channel
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 28 October 2002
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