|
|
1911-1966
Poet and novelist. Born at Wednesbury, Staffordshire, in December 1911. Educated at Wednesbury High School he won a scholarship to Birmingham University, to read English, History and Spanish, graduating in 1933. He wrote verse and acted in University productions, while finding time for his favourite pastime of boxing. He went into teaching, firstly in Leicestershire before going to The College, Cleobury Mortimer for a year until it closed. Here he met his wife, Mary Woodman, a geography teacher at the school, and they married in 1939. From Shropshire he moved to Tynemouth and then, in 1938, to Barton-on-Humber in Lincolnshire, his home for the rest of his life.
During the war he served as an intelligence officer with the Royal Air Force. He returned to the post of Senior English Master at the Grammar school, Barton-on Humber, and remained there until December 1959. Coronary thrombosis led to his decision to give up teaching and concentrate on his writing and he died in June 1966.
In the late nineteen-thirties he was a founder member of the Apocalyptic movement in poetry, jointly with J.F. Hendry. This was a reaction to the rationalist approach of W.H. Auden and his contemporaries.
He wrote a large number of historical novels, many for children, set in the Viking and Roman Britain.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Ask for King Billy (1955)
The black seasons (1945) [Poetry]
Bombard (1959)
Bronze sword
Crusades
The dark island (1952)
Don't expect any mercy (1958)
Dream time
Electra (1963)
The green man (1965)
The haunted garden (1947) [Poetry]
The horned helmet (1963)
Hounds of the king (1955)
Hunter hunted (1957)
Invaders - three stories
Jason (1961)
Legions of the eagle (1954)
Man with a sword (1964)
Oedipus (1964)
The splintered sword (1965)
Swords from the north
Viking's dawn (1955)
Viking's sunset (1960)
War dog (1962)
Wickham and the armada
Windswept city
The following work is available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Henry Treece by Margery Fisher. A Bodley Head Monograph, 1969.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 28 October 2002
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
Please read the general terms and conditions and about accessibility on this site, including the use of the UK government accesskeys system. Further details on ICRA labelling, visitor counts and EnrichUK may be obtained by following these external links:-
|
|